chimney_swift | Entries tagged with swifty irl

It's the winter solstice and I went to see the Christmas Revels tonight. It had the smallest audience I've ever seen for the Revels, and it was a pared down show. But it was there! There was singing and dancing and some nods at inclusion and multi-culturalism. It was nice. And the days are going to get longer, and the year will spin on.

The Shortest Day
by Susan Cooper

So the shortest day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, reveling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us - listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This shortest day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And so do we, here, now
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

The most important update first: my D&D puzzles were successful! I did some internet searching and found a good bunch to use. My players solved (almost) all the ones they came across, and had a bunch of fun. The highlight of the night though, was a puzzle I recreated from one I found that made them do the "YMCA" dance in order to open a door. I had been waiting to spring it on them all night, and it definitely payed off. :)

In apartment news, my roommates and I spent last Saturday moving all our living room furniture around. One of my roommates, Blackbird, has a keyboard, and the goal was to move it out of his room and into an appropriate spot in the living room. After a couple of hours, we succeeded! There is now more light and a keyboard. We've been taking advantage of all of the "best of Broadway" books, which has been a fun time.

I've been struggling to motivate lately, and I'm having a hard time figuring out why. I can sometimes look at what I have to do and point to the things that are stressing me out--that phone call, all the steps involved in answering that email, dinner for all of those days. And I have a couple of those, but this feels like a more general struggle as well. I don't want to do that text, or that email, or that class, or that reading, or keep up with that conversation. Part of me thinks that I should start a new project, something I can be excited about. But I also need to...start something then. Well, we'll see.

Finally! Two months later, a quick write-up of the craziest Sunday I've had this year by far.

A note: I'm referring to this celebration as Chinese New Year or CNY. This holiday is not exclusive to the Chinese, however. The lunar new year happens in many Asian countries, and is celebrated in many ways (including with lion dance! in Vietnam, the lions become unicorns, how cool). This specific event draws on Chinese customs in Boston Chinatown, and while it's definitely open to all, it's also definitely aimed at the Chinese communities in the area. So I'm using CNY as my term, but generally, it's lunar new year.

My day started at eight thirty in the morning at our den, where the whole troupe gathered to get ready for the day and to coordinate for the volunteers who would arrive. I brought two volunteers: my friends Snowy and Plover who acted as photographers and videographers all day. The photos in this post are all Snowy's, actually! There were bao for breakfast and nearly forty people in bright red troupe sweatshirts and maybe twelve of us from the performing side. We got our drum, our cymbals, our gong, our crowd control sticks, our banners, and our lions and headed out.

The way the day works is that each lion dance troupe performs on main-stage performance, and then heads out into Chinatown. We each visit every shop in the area who is participating and dance for them, bringing good luck. Each store has cabbage and oranges for the lion to eat, and in return they give us money in a red envelope. The lion performing can't stop dancing until the day is done, so we would switch out who was dancing underneath. The day for us ended at four thirty/five, and everyone who was left went to a ten course dinner. I don't think any of the performers ate lunch; there was no time and we were running on adrenaline.

It was magical. I'm not really sure how to convey everything that happened that day. There was so much and it all felt so much bigger than me. It was wonderful and overwhelming and tiring and awesome.

I think I really realized how the day was going to go when we were walking to the main stage. All of the different lion dance groups were converging on the outdoor performance space that had been set up, so everyone had all their performance lions and their troupe banners. I hadn't realized just how big the banners are--maybe eight feet tall--and we walked down the empty street with our banners and our lions and our music and all of the sudden you could hear different drums and cymbals and see different banners and I suddenly understood that we were all arriving. And I was a part of it.

I went to sleep with cymbals still in my ears.

It was the most satisfying and fulfilling community event I've ever been part of in Boston.

( Some of Snowy's photos of the day are under the cut. )

Current Location: Boston Chinatown

Hello!

It's been rather a while since I've posted anything here, so I thought I'd give a quick update. I went on some more big adventures; most notably hiking the Rota Vicentina trail in Portugal during March! Work-wise I: went through the craziest paperwork to try and become a substitute teacher; attended an Equity/Inclusion training for my summer job; and have continued to freelance for some local theaters building sets.
I still want to make a post about CNY, and I'd like to do one about Portugal. I'm very slow to write things up, but hopefully I'll get them done before I leave for the woods for the summer.
So, watch this space I guess, but not too hard. :)

I made it!

A month ago, I mentioned that the lion dance troupe I'm in was about to kick into high gear. Well, we sure did! Here are some highlights from a month of dancing.

The first weekend, we did one performance out at a shopping center/outdoor mall and one at a local library. Lion dancing brings good luck and prosperity for the new year, so many businesses request a troupe to perform. The shopping mall sounded like a fun opportunity...but then they asked us to do way more than we originally thought, and barely paid us! The library was way more fun. Tons of kids to interact with and a good practice for our bigger performances.

The next weekend was our performance at the Museum of Fine Arts, for their lunar new year celebration. It's one of our biggest performances, and we actually do our routine twice. It was so cool to show off all our hard work. New for this year was a drumming piece that I was in, which was very cool. Every year we have a "mainstage" performance that's one lion doing really cool stuff, usually following a story and a "general" performance that's two or three lions doing a standard routine. MFA was our first chance to perform all of the different parts, and it went super well. The audiences were great, and during our first performance, I nailed my lift! I'd been working with my partner on it for months.

The next weekend we went out to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem for their lunar new year celebration. We only do one performance there, but we bring our "cubs", the children's troupe to perform. They did an amazing job, and I got my lift again!

In between all that, we also performed for a Whole Foods; some supermarkets; a Buddhist temple; and the Bruins! And then we had our big day. I think I'll split off Chinatown's CNY into its own post so this one doesn't get too long. :)

( Some assorted photos under the cut... )

I love libraries so much.

I just got back from an excellent event at the Boston Public Library. The main branch hosted a talk by Andrew Aydin, the co-author with Congressman John Lewis of the graphic novel March. He was excellent. Part of what made his talk so engaging is his passion for different things: for comics, for civil service, for the history of the Civil Rights Movement, for the struggles and triumphs of his mother. The talk was put on by Facing History and Ourselves, an organization dedicated to helping teachers teach tough moments in history and connect their students to not only those events but what's happening in the present day. They're worth checking out. And while I have not read March, it sounds worth reading.

At the talk there were:
-Many references to Dragoncon
-Five groups of students (four Boston school groups and one from Lowell)
-A handful of Allstate agents (the Allstate Foundation was a sponsor)
-Two confirmed school librarians (I overheard them in front of me)
-One teacher grading as she listened

It was a great way to spend a Monday night.

It begins!

So I'm a member of a lion dance troupe. Lion dance, if you don't know, is a traditional Chinese dance. It's most often done as part of celebrations and to give good luck, and it draws a lot from kung fu. Here's a pretty cool YouTube video of some very impressive lion dancing. We're not that good or crazy, but our best members can do some pretty cool moves.

Yesterday, we had our first performance to celebrate Chinese New Year. New Year is a big time for lion dancing, because it's a big time for good luck. Many, many places want a lion to come and perform to bring luck to them for the new year ahead. As such, we're swamped. I'm booked three weekends in a row both Saturday and Sunday with performances, and we have a couple mid-week as well. But this will be the first year that I get to perform with the group properly. Last year I just played cymbals, and couldn't make the big CNY celebration in Boston Chinatown. This year, I'm in a lion for a bunch of performances, and I'll be at CNY--if not in a lion, at least there! I'm very excited.

Hello!

I don't really say much.

I started this journal as a way to write things without any fear of people finding them. Since the slow descent of Tumblr turned into a nosedive, I've started rebuilding the network of people I follow over here. I'm not great at participating; I'm a pretty dedicated lurker. Feel free to say hello or interact though! I just am not great at starting the conversation.

Right now I listen to too many podcasts; I read books; and every once in a while I try to watch stuff. I work in technical theater during the year and the woods during the summer.

And if you're curious, here is the poem my journal title is from.

Chimney Swift