full stop.

And then suddenly...it all stopped. Well, not all of it: I'm dreaming about it now, and still hearing the music when I'm awake...

But instead of being inside a theater talking about HQIs, megaphone directionality, or the Glitterbush, I am outside in the amazing Amsterdam sun, which offers a bit of consolation.

+++

i love a parade.

This is Groningen, where I just spent an exhausting but thoroughly enjoyable week with my two Good Collaborators. It was kind of like a vacation with 12-hour work days. Very new and creatively disorienting stuff, this whole theater business, but everyone and everything about the Grand Theater was just awesomely supportive and so it was OK.

More detail perhaps after tonight's Showdown With Destiny.

festiveheads.

When we're not being Serious Artists upstairs (pictured above), we're debriefing downstairs in the restaurant, which is called Lab 111.

This is the most frequently I've eaten out in a long time, say 4 times in the past couple of weeks, and thus far I really have no complaints about this place: the space is relaxed and fun to look at, friendly people behind the bar, mostly decent music, etc.

The food? I don't really know, I eat the same thing every time, and it's great: a sort of steak salad with red lettuce, truffle oil, thick shavings of Parmesan, and some kind of very light soy vinaigrette. Accompanied by a glass or two of red before and/or during, it's an excellent way to spend 20 minutes (and 9 euro).

+++

disappearer.

I'm going away for a couple of weeks, nothing's wrong, it's the homestretch of this theatre piece that I've been working on, my first. It's been a generally/genuinely fun and educational experience with exception of any point at which I have to interact with or rely on the worthless curator/promoter, who is at best possibly stupid and a definitely thoroughly incompetent annoyance. At best. At worst, she inspires me to the concoction of atypically irrational revenge schemes, which I will share with you all in the event that I am forced to deploy any of them.

But whatever. Take a deep cleansing breath. It's about the art, right? Above is a photo of my Good Collaborator's poodle happily relaxing in the refuse of our opening procession.

See y'all in a bit.

Oh yeah, and this:

+++

medianoche.

Actually, it's quite a bit later than that. In lieu of sleeping, I'm making lists in my head, so I thought that writing them here might make them go away for a while.

Before I jotted down This Morning's 5:14 Obsession, I did some Googling on what a "safe" amount of melatonin would be. I normally take 0.3 mg per night, which is three of these tiny tiny pills. People with chronic insomnia can be prescribed doses of up to 6mg (60 of my tiny tiny pills). So it seems that another one shouldn't hurt me right now.

After I jotted down TM5O, I combined some mozzarella and harissa in my mouth (wrapped in a bit of lavash), and I was reminded of this thing that I once wanted to make but forgot about.

+++

Today's shopping list:

1 jar roasted eggplant
1 thing of yoghurt
check to see if our garlic is still alright
2 lemons
1 cup of walnuts
3-6 red peppers or a jar
pomegranate molasses
mint
cilantro
kalonji

baguettes

+++

The above was all for some birthday party cooking I'm doing, any guesses as to what I'm making? That was rhetorical, I'm making Syrian muhammara and Persian borani e badjeman, those are my spellings without Googling, now let's see how close I was to the generally accepted spellings: yes and oops.

Does that ever happen to you? You think you learn a word in another language, and pronounce it in your head enough to where you "learn" the pronunciation, only to find out later that you've made some sort of gross transposition of elements? Nope, just me? Coooool.

+++