I Smell Fear

First off, I want to say thanks. As of early this week, this site has over a thousand hits on it. Not knowing much about this sort of thing, it seems impressive to me- so either one of you is obsessively checking the site in hopes of... well, I don't know.... the meaning of life, perhaps (you can stop looking, you'll never find it here)- or many of you have fallen into a ritualistic weekly reading of my rants. Either way, it's cool. Secondly, today marks the end of an era that I personally feel needs to be acknowledge. My phobia of big purchases is being dealt with head on and I am en route to buy myself a laptop. Try as I might to convince myself to cheap out on it, I just couldn't. So here we go... someone hold my hand... I'm scared!!

Speaking of fear, I smell fear on the campaign trail. Shortly after my announcement last week about my intentions to run in the presidential election, the local candidate started being very friendly to me. True, the Sun King (as he calls himself) has always been friendly. He dresses in the traditional Korean hanbok and takes to the streets directing traffic or greeting people outside the subway in the morning, but somehow his demeanor seems to have changed. He is afraid, I can tell. He knows that I hold an advantage. While he parades about the neighbourhood with his campaign do-gooder activities, begging for attention, people pass him by. His business cards litter the streets of Kkachisan and on Friday nights, the Sun King can be found drunk in a local pub. The shop he rented as campaign headquarters is difficult to find, hidden beneath piles and piles of the traditional Bonne Chance bouquets. I've determined there is either a secret entrance- perhaps a trap door that leads into the back store- or else those inside arrived before the flowers did, and will remain until after the election, or the flowers die- whichever comes first. (These same bouquets can be found littering St Catherine Street (east of Guy) year round, with the usual opening and closing of the hundreds of Chinese noodle places.) If you can dig your way through half of the flowers, you'll come face to face with Santa. Here we are, April- and the Sun King has not yet retired Santa to the closets like the rest of us. In January, Santa wore a hanbok. But then the Sun King needed it back to patrol the streets with his do-gooder campaign non-sense. So Santa gladly gave up his hanbok, and now he wears the uniform of the Korean soccer team. One can only assume that this is in anticipation of the World Cup... although who knows, the Sun King and I are clearly not on the same page. If you are lucky enough to catch Santa's eye, he immediately begins dancing and singing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas". If you're blessed with Superman vision, and your eyes can cut through the flowers behind Santa, you'll see that on the back wall is an enormous floor to ceiling poster of... who else? The Sun King. As I left my house the other night, on my way to return yet another bad movie to the video store, I happened to run into the Sun King and his wife (the Sun Queen?). Perhaps it's my imagination, but I'm sure his eyes became ever-so tiny slits as he bowed and said hello. But that wasn't enough, the evil look he shot me didn't put his mind at ease. He asked where I was going. And I told him, quite simply, I was walking. To which he responded that perhaps I should walk behind him. And I laughed, but inside my own tempers were rising. Walk behind you? Now this is exactly why Korea needs to vote for me. I have never, nor will ever, take a few steps back to follow behind 'the man'. At least he seems to recognize the appeal that a blond women has to the Korean public. Was this an offer to join forces with him? To run together a la Canadian Alliance & Reform? I smell fear... his fear... mmm... Sun King fear..

In other news, I've been cast in a play title Never Swim Alone by Canadian, Daniel MacIvor. The process of working on a play with a young director has come as quite a shock to my actor's sensitivities, after having worked with Ms Kate Bligh on my last show. For those of you who don't know Kate, she's British, and being such has some strong opinions about the way things should be done on stage. The stage is a sacred space. It is Kate who was responsible for the earlier than expected removal of my piercings. It was Kate that instilled in me the professionalism that I have in my acting. I make it sound as though I've achieved this professionalism through hard work, but more to the point, I had no choice. Her super-organizational abilities and all-seeing eye allows her to have a throughout understanding of the piece. So working with someone whose end of rehearsal notes end at "Turn more to the audience" and "You missed this line", is really strange. It is giving me the opportunity however, to uncover things for myself, and I don't have to listen to someone telling me where I need to work. I think most actors with a brain in their head are hyper-aware of where they need to work. It's that damn brain, after all, that stands between us and brilliant work. The brain that keeps talking to you, even when you want it to stop, cause you know if it stopped, you'd nail it. I'm probably starting to sound crazy now. That's okay- here's a little known fact about me (or perhaps widely known, I don't know)- I am crazy. Don't say it too loud though, crazy is a swear here in Korea.

Having said that I have a memory only slightly better than a goldfish, it seems pretty impressive that I remember any of my schooling. But it seems that I do. Besides interrogating M Sabraw as to why he wouldn't cut his hair, I also remember a certain unit about Japan. Now what makes a significant enough impression on a twelve year old Canadian girl with a poor memory, that at the age of twenty five she recalls her first introduction to Asian culture? A few things. The shock of discovering that Japanese children (and consequently, Koreans as well) spend nearly every waking moment in school. I remember saying that I would never want to go there because there was too much school. Yet here I am, a cog in the wheel that is keeping these poor kids imprisoned in office buildings away from the park. What else do I recall of these lessons? The Sumo wrestlers, obviously. Athletes that large rarely go unnoticed. And the spring festivals. I remember hearing about the Lotus Lantern Festivals and thinking how overwhelming it must be to have such an atmosphere of celebration. How beautiful to have lanterns strung throughout the city, and a lantern in every hand. And it was. The festival was in celebration of Buddha's birthday on May 5th. I spent the day in Insadon- the Buddhist cultural area... somewhat, I suppose like Montreal's Old Port. An area that holds onto the past. But unlike the Old Port, the area is not completely overrun with tourists. The day time events weren't anything particularly spectacular. There were information booths pandering panphlets for different types of Buddhism. There was free vegan food available on the street. Make your own lanterns and lotus flowers. Lots of dancers and drums. Buddhist monks swarmed the street, some as young as three years old. To keep in constant communication, many carried cell phones. To keep the memories? Cameras, of course. As I headed to the subway, I was slightly disappointed. A festival with an international reputation and this was the best it could do? I felt ripped off, I'm sure a feeling similar to how a tourist to Calgary secretly feels after the Stampede (sorry, Calgary- I never got the big Stampede thing). As I was about to step into the subway, I noticed the parade was starting. So I stopped to watch, for what I thought would be a few minutes. It started like any other parade, but then the shear amount of lanterns, both in the crowd and in the parade overwhelmed me. Any imaginable size, shape and colour. Many that to me, were totally unimaginable. The parade lasted about three hours, and half way through my section of the crowd was coaxed into the parade. Part of the tradition being that the crowd joins the parade and all the lanterns wind their way through the streets until they reach the temple, symbolizing Buddha's journey to the temple. The sound of Korean traditional drums thundered in my ears, and the streets were lit by the glow of the lanterns. Men and women in traditional Korean costumes danced excitedly in the street, pulling members of the crowd in to join them. Fireworks shot from the dragons and phoenix floats. As the temple came into view, thousands of lanterns formed a tent ceiling outside the temple. And the lanterns were all lit. Each one had a prayer attached to it. This was the gathering place. As each person finished their journey to the temple, this is where they met. At first, it was rather empty- but slowly it filled up and the dancers and drums found their space. I was pulled into the performance space again and again to dance with the drummers, as were many other foreigners. It seemed we were something of a target. An elderly Korean man passed me incence and pointed me to what I assume was an area for prayer. Another took my lantern from me and passed me his. I assume because mine was cheap cardboard and his was a real lantern. One of the Korean dancers, dressed in a beautiful flowing red dress pulled me back into the space and insisted I stay. In true Korean fashion, she thanked me for coming- perhaps not completely seeing that this experience was so foreign to me and I was thrilled to be there. The two minutes I intended to stay turned into four hours, and I dragged myself home after an incredibly long, stimulating day. Buddha's birthday, obviously- is the Buddhist Christmas. And after such an uplifting cultural experience- shared with strangers that I will never see again, it makes me question where Christianity went oh-so-wrong. Catholism is littered with rituals, but none of them (I found) elevate you. None of them engage you with a celebration that is bigger than you. There is no release- no ecstatic party, no drums. There are Christmas trees that have lost their meaning and a fat old man that brings gifts to good children. But only the good ones. A candle is lit each week for four weeks prior to Christmas. One is pink, three are purple. Maybe the other way around, it's been so long I can hardly remember. The Santa Claus parade, in all honesty- is usually pretty lame. Every family has their own Christmas traditions, but in a country so big and families so divided- how much do we really just yearn for a real party, without the pressure of commercialism? The only Canadian ritual I can think of are Montreal's tam-tams. A Sunday ritual in Montreal based around the spot where Jacques Cartier first planted the French flag. There is no relationship between the tams and Jacques, at least not that I know of, but on this spot there stands a huge statue that marks the center of the tams. Drummers and dancers gather, with the Dungeons and Dragons gamers off in the sand pits, and the acrobats, sunbathers and frisbee throwers scattered about the mountain. The sound of the drums is intoxicating, and it is perhaps, the one thing that we have that is trully ritualistic. We've lost so much of ritual, in the name of civilization and order. But we crave it. We need it. But as our schedules become more and more packed with meaningless, trivial duties, we neglect to engage ourselves in life. We're too busy vegging in front of the TV or stressing about our chequebooks. We forget that sometimes we need to escape. Theater, dance, music- the performing arts emerged from ritual - from engagement with the very things that we all share. And having lost ritual, we've lost art as well. We wonder why modern plays can't hold a candle to the works of Shakespeare and Marlowe. I think it's because we have forgotten the very reason that the rituals of performing were so important to begin with. We all have, the audience, the performers, the writers. None of us remember why we're doing it to begin with. Round the world, Asians are thought of as hard workers. Their six day work weeks and year round schooling is baffling to North Americans and Europeans. It's baffling to me and I'm here living it. But Koreans have clearly shown me that they are able to hold on to the past in a modern setting. They are able to set their work weeks aside for a party in the streets of Seoul. They are able to let loose and really celebrate what they believe, without stiffling ritual that is more about social conditioning than true ritual. The interest that was sparked in Asian culture long ago was fully ignited as I continue to contemplate all that I've seen...