orale pues i won’t bother you with too much indonesian but just to get the spirit of travel i might throw in some more approachable languages on occasion.
so bali is populated entirely by beautiful, glowing, happy, exquisitely friendly people who love art. as far as i can tell, that is. i mean, logically, i could say it’s easy to see why: the island itself is all of those things, lush & green & humid; mossy temples & houses that look themselves like temple complexes; wild strange fruit trees & plenty of rain. not even a highway to encourage people to rush, panicked. but there’s something else going on here: communities take care of their members. with wide open, never-locked community spaces & nightly village gamelan rehearsals using instruments owned by the village, seemingly plenty of time for tea & conversation, & i’ve yet seen no obvious wealth nor obvious poverty. there’s a certain social conservatism around ostentatious displays of affection between men & women in public, but people actually seem very open & relaxed about many things that would offend most puritan-inspired americans, right down to overt yet artistic depictions of nudity & even eroticism, in shops, homes, & temples. in general there’s a relaxedness i’ve never seen anywhere, little sense of people wanting to restrict each other unnecessarily, and it’s reflected (i think) in an endemic sense of contentment.
there are however, three armies i’ve encountered: mopeds, dogs, and roosters. the latter two face off every morning outside my window starting around 4am. as a result of that & of the fact that electric light is more scarce than i’m used to, i’m sleeping about 9:30-4:00 every day. i’m staying with a family in what appears from the outside to be a modest hindu temple, two stairs up to a porch of glimmering white tile, two more stairs to a beautiful red & gilded door. inside is considerably more spartan yet lovely in the manner of a monk’s quarters, with woven grass ceiling & eternally open window, furnished only with a bed (still encased in plastic wrapping) & tiny table. the hornet’s nest embedded in the ceiling seems dormant, thankfully.
we’re spending most of our days mostly in rehearsal, punctuated by meals of tempeh, white rice, and papaya. we sweat constantly.
two or three or four mornings ago (the noun “time” is often here modified by the adjective “rubber”) we were blessed at 5am by a hindu priest in a temple occupying grounds which can only possibly be described as the most beautiful place on earth. it’s difficult to describe what i felt there in any words other than “surrender” but i can completely understand why they dedicated that land to worship hundreds of years ago.
yesterday we had an inspiring workshop with Pak I Wayan Dibya, one of the biggest innovators in balinese performance of the last forty years. he mostly works in the kecak form (which is one aspect of our performance as well, and consists of interlocking percussive vocal rhythms) but has taken it pretty far away from the slightly monotone, even textures you’ll find in traditional performances, & he includes some really fun & funky sounds & even encourages improvisation. for the first time in a while, it felt like our group was playful together.
we have six more rehearsal days until we perform at the Bali Arts Festival, which is a big deal, and which i think none of us is sure whether we’ll be ready for. some aspects of our performance seem interesting & close to ready, but plenty is rough & unfinished. we’re settling into a mixture of panic & resignation, though there’s still just enough time to think we can pull it together, perhaps. honestly, though, there needs to be some radical change in how things run. i’m planning an intervention with the director tomorrow to try to shift things… yes i’m being deliberately vague, because i don’t want to gossip. i just want to convey a sense of the group’s morale right now.
but that’s just about the performance. being here & being with these people (both the Balinese folks and the people in my troupe) is actually extremely inspiring & even transformative. i’ve been meditating a couple of hours every morning (what else is there to do at 4am?) and finding myself opening in new ways with people.
anyway this computer thing is feeling quite jarring after a week of hardly using electricity, so i’m signing off. my access is somewhat sporadic right now, but will write again as soon as i can.
love p
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