Day 4: bells of Vyšehrad, applause in prague, and other news.
For some ungodly reason I’ve been up since five AM, local time—and I thought I’d totally conquered jet lag since my first two nights here I slept fairly normal hours… ah well. Contemplative time in the morning is nice. I read R. Crumb’s Kafka (art by R. Crumb, natch, and text by David Zane Mairowitz), a book my friend here suggested I read to help put me in the proper Praguian mood. It was a very nice read/viewing, and totally summed up Kafka for the ignorant layman, like myself.
I’ve also spent the last few hours cramming for Berlin, emailing friends of friends way too late for it to be of any use, and google mapping directions from the train station to the hostel to the theaters where I’ve arranged to see some shows.
I have also spent some nice quality time this morning writing introspective shit about being a tourist in a land where I can’t speak or read or understand the language, typifying the Dumb American who didn’t bother to get her act together to learn something other than english; howsumever, that introspective shit is not the kind of thing I share on these rambles, so the Gentle Reader will remain ignorant of the exact details of said writing, and will have to be satisfied with my glossed over summary.
Oh. I was going to deal with Day 4 – and I’m sort of just discussing Day 5, which is today.
Okay, in brief, since it’s time I made some coffee and headed out:
Day 4 (yesterday, thursday, 7 january 2010)
some notes:
my friend/host, her sister (who’s also visiting now), and I walked up to Vyšehrad, a 10th century castle on a hill that features: some lovely decaying brick walls; an equally lovely (and even lush, oddly, although it was winter) cemetery (where some celebrity Czechs are buried, including Antonin Dvo?ák), which was wonderful to walk around; a gorgeous basilica restored at the turn of the last century and reopened to the public in 1992, which we almost didn’t go into because we were feeling cheap and thought you had to pay (you didn’t); a stand from which we purchased some hot wine & grog, and walked around the park in the cold sipping on hot alcoholic beverages with a humbling view of the city…it felt very decadent, which, of course, it was. Then we got a little too cold, and hopped on the metro.
I spent more time in cafes wandering from my friend’s apartment to the Archa theatre (I think in Stare Mesto neighborhood, but unsure…), where I’d planned to see a premiere of a new dance/music/theater project called Emigrantes. I’m fairly enamored of the number and style of cafes here; I think I could probably spend my entire time here wandering around the streets and ducking into various spots, and I’d feel like it was time well spent. But castles & museums & performances/art are a nice touch, as well… the cafes just appeal to that hide-in-a-corner part of myself, that is generally at regular war with the get-on-a-stage-and-perform part of myself. For this trip, I’m content to be an observer/hider.
The performance was great, in spite of my nonexistent understanding of the Czech language. I definitely missed some critical stuff in the opening and closing monologues, delivered by one of the four child performers (it was four adults & four children)—so probably I missed, you know, the point—but the bulk of the performance was movement, with music, and I definitely enjoyed much of the choreography and general themes. I knew going in, since I’d read from the website, that the piece was about the refugee experience through the eyes of children, and that certainly came across in very basic ways. What surprised me was the rough and even violent movement duets involving an adult & child – I don’t think I’ve ever seen adult + child dancing together in a way that was so hostile and unsparing in terms of sentiment; I also enjoyed the adult duets, although it wasn’t as new or surprising to me—attempts to connect/engage/be intimate, but dealing with too many barriers to said-intimacy that the connection is inevitably foiled…ah, the trials of human alienation…The music was all performed live by two musicians who were great.
The feel actually reminded me a lot of some of the work I’ve seen at Campo Santo & Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco.
Okay, I’ll just say one more thing and then close this computer—the most surprising part of the performance at Archa was not the crazy violent/rough adult-child interaction (which again I loved, and not because I like seeing kids beat up [I know what you're thinking...], but because it was a lot more honest than other child-adult interactions I’ve seen of late, and a lot more complicated), but the applause at the end of the one-hour performance. Holy shit, the Czech people applaud. The performers came out for maybe three curtain calls, all amid completely nonstop clapping; at one point the musicians joined in; then a few people who I imagine were the director and choreographer, perhaps; then some more people joined in the curtain call, people who had taken my ticket at the door and other staff I’d seen in the building; then some random other kids ran up on the stage and joined the performers—and all the while the clapping did not stop, at all; there was some cheering, as well. I kept looking around to see if this was normal, or if the performers themselves were taken aback by the relentless show of appreciation…at one point, the clapping somehow got synchronized, and everyone clapped on the same beat in an eerie moment of audiencial conformity…then it broke down for the most part. But my god, I thought it would never end—it must have gone on for fifteen minutes, I don’t know. It was late. It was dark. I didn’t speak the language. Who knows.
Okay. Enough of this, for now.
oh! one more thing. On my way home, I passed a McDonald’s with outdoor seating, which surprised me, since it’s fucking freezing out. But then I noticed that all the tables, maybe six of them, with chairs and umbrellas over the tables, had heat lamps. McDonalds with fancy heat lamps. Right next door to a museum about communism, by the way.
Okay. now, done.
