Wishing you all a restful break! Next two weeks will feel like a whirlwind, I just know it. Ringo is gearing up for it, but right now we have to take care of Thanksgiving leftovers.
See you next Friday!
Georgie
Ringo From the Stars
Tag: writing
Crooked Fool: Dance it Crooked
Meander, twist
Dancing around
No lines, no limits, all angle
Twisting, turning
Like the branches of a tree
Like an ancient river
And yet somehow this is wrong
Every day
Stretching away pain
Exploding power into muscles
Insisting.
And trying to remember that the enemy isn’t my body
It’s the expectation that if you can’t do things one way
You shouldn’t do them at all
Insisting
On movement
Because it heals
And I don’t have to do it standing “straight”
Breath expanding
Crushed against ribs
Heart pounding more than it should
Feeling deeply into each muscle
Because crooked things can be beautiful
But take a bit of searching
Breathe
Sharp exhale
Dizzy
Lightheaded
Still moving
Insisting
For me
Dance
In a spiral
In a twist
Roll
Leap
You’re not made of glass
Don’t let them tell you so
This dance is resistance
Against the idea that only certain kinds of bodies can do it “right”
That some bodies should only exist in breakable inaction
Noiselessness
Cooperation
Convenience
Move
Dance
Spine
Breath
Because you were not meant to be shackled into stillness
The Bursley Pirate Ship: FLOOD EDITION
PIRATE SHIP FACT: Even medieval pirate ships had drainage systems to disperse the effects of ship flooding (the Middle Ages started around 476 A. D. for reference).
I started this blog with a metaphor. I did not mean to manifest the symbolism.
Last Thursday marked Bursley Hall’s brief run as the Ann Arbor Kalahari. After a pipe broke on the fifth floor of Sanford House, the four floors below became aquatic as well, with over half of each hall experiencing flooding from under their doors and walls. The building was evacuated at around 1 AM while campus officers dealt with the damage.
I was sitting the CLC when the fire alarm went off. This is terrible to publish publicly, but I was quite ready to sit out the alarm. It’s a testament to my lack of self preservation, but the chance that the smoke isn’t just from someone microwaving their popcorn for forty-five minutes is very slim at this point. Thankfully, someone with much better senses burst into the CLC and yelled “there’s BLACK WATER filling the hallway we gotta go right-“
Even I got that cue.
We quickly grabbed our belongings (because I’d rather drown than tell my parents I need a new computer) and headed towards Baits. As my friends and I passed Bursley on our walk, the steam we saw on the windows was cruel foreshadowing.
I remember laughing in Baits with everyone about how we should go do laps, a hall toilet was revolting, etc. Baits filled with confused Bursley kids till 1:30 am. While looking for positives, the Bursley residents looked around and found hope in the statement “at least we don’t live here.”
The second statement that was fueling me was “well it can’t be my hall.” Then my friend got a text from a source near the building.
We ran back to Bursley, swiped in probably twenty times cause the card reader was feeling needy, and ran to my roommate and I’s dorm. I looked across the floor and girls were already dumping their wet items into the hall. There was a pool of water at the center of the floor that everyone was hopping over like it was their 9 to 5, exhausted faces all around. The girls on my floor were already over it, and it had just begun.
I threw my door open to find the entire back flooded. Our fridge was swimming in a couple inches of water while the microwave and coffee machine were getting showered by the water pouring in from the window. Thankfully, I am surrounded by people who are way too nice who helped my roommate and I sort through our drenched belongings.
When I tucked myself into my friend’s couch (which was actually really comfortable), it was around 4 am. We later learned that a pipe broke on the fifth floor when two boys were playing football, and accidentally hit a sprinkler. Either Tom Brady reenrolled and got housed here to study musical theatre at the drama center, or Bursley is the only building in history with paper piping. Not only do we live in the woods, but now we live near the lake.
They offered us temporary housing in Stockwell, which I believe is one of the nicest dorms on campus. So from our perspective it’s like our decaying cabin in the woods got destroyed, but then the landlord for our cabin decided to give us keys to their penthouse, only to snatch it away in about a week. This is a university sponsored space so I do want to mention (for nuance) that yes yes, this is an accidental and isolated situation. I’ll ponder this more from the Qdoba in the West Quad basement.
At least this album cover came out of it.
From the Sanford House lazy river while sipping dining hall apple juice on a flamingo floaty,
Captain Singh
Bursley Buccaneer: Sahithy “Solo” Prattipati
PIRATE SHIP FACT: To help them stay awake during longer trips, some pirates would drink coffee for its stimulating effects.
Saturday, November 9th – 8:47 p.m.
On Saturday nights, when as many in-state kids as possible have fled Bursley to their homes, the Community Learning Center (CLC) is eerily empty. A few of us were scattered between the couches, which is where Sahithy and I began yapping.
I told her to “tell me a story. Literally any story.” Getting content for this blog requires some desperate hail Marys for anecdotes. In that moment, I wonder how Sahithy (a friend I made in the first couple weeks on campus) felt when I cornered her during her study session looking for content. Thankfully, she lended me some of her time, and told me about her solo trip visit to India. I asked her for three major moments, not necessarily world shaking, but personal to her. She focused in on Goa, India.
A Debatable Brush With Death
On their drive to visit the mountains in Goa, Sahithy’s family loaded her into their car and drove up through the famous slopes. Not only was the incline dangerously steep, but water Sahithy described as almost “two feet high” barreled towards the car on their journey upwards. While she was pondering her near demise, the rest of her family was completely chill and assured her the conditions were normal. By the end, she wasn’t sure who was crazy.
The Hidden Falls
Throughout the mountains, there were humongous waterfalls that made her feel minuscule in comparison. Not only were they mind meltingly large, but they were located in hidden coves across the summit.
The Window Seat
Sahithy assured me that the entire trip was relatively relaxed, other than the reverse slip-and-slide up the mountain. However, before she discussed any of the moments above, she told me about the last event chronologically: the flight back. Usually the window seat is a win, but when you’re alone, anyone you could imagine could end up next to you. In her case, two six-foot tall men were passed out snoring to her right, for eleven plus hours. That meant that if she wanted to go to the bathroom, she would end up destabilizing two already uncomfortable people, who were packed in chairs with barely enough leg room for us small Indian women.
When she’s not battling mountain currents, Sahithy studies Business here at Michigan. Her story is inspiring to those who have never solo traveled, and terrifying if you are someone who uses the bathroom twice an hour on a plane (speaking generally, of course).
Still from the CLC,
Captain Singh
~Sappy Daze~ Day 7
sometimes i wonder & leave the pickle jar unscrewed like the time i stole a hamster from my neighbor & still have but not want & the time i showed my bloody wound knowing that mother would scream i still am wandering to know why i did that & endlessly i still am wondering - sappy
Crooked Fool: Haunted
I went to an audition the day I turned 21. The callback involved a series of writing prompts for ultra-short plays lasting around 2 minutes. They could be many things, but they had to be true.
I ended up turning in a couple of plays about how I’d grown up in a strange old house that I’d always thought was haunted. Those callback pieces ended up turning into a series of close to 100 ultra-short plays, mixed and matched in various combinations during performance, where I tried to understand what ghosts were and whether they were real.
From Ghosts: Vol. 8 –
Do you hear the sighs, the groans
The songs
The cries
The footsteps
You can imagine them if you need to
It shouldn’t make a difference
I never did come up with any kind of concrete answer. Instead, I came to a place where I was more comfortable living in the gray. Odds are, no one will ever be able to definitively prove that ghosts exist, but what difference does that really make when we’re experiencing their effects? When something is haunting us, does it really matter whether we can prove to the world that it fits some kind of socially constructed definition of what counts as real, or does it matter that, for one reason or another, something is crying out for us to hear?
Vol. 8 –
You can try ignoring them
Good luck
You can close your ears and your mind
But the voices will shine through
In your empathy
Your convictions
Your hesitations
Looking ahead at what may be a dark, heavy time in my life and in our collective story, I’ve been thinking a lot about what ghosts may be haunting us right now. What unfinished business and half-learned lessons are we being forced to pay attention to? What stories from the past are looping back around with renewed urgency and vitality?
I don’t know the answer yet. We’ll have to wait and see. But whether we’re talking about spirits, stories, or something else difficult to grasp, we’re staring down a very charged, very haunted time. And even more so than listening to the haunting voices already there, I think we need to start figuring out what makes it worth it for us to cry out in the night. I feel this especially keenly as an artist.
From Ghosts: Vol. 4 –
What if the inspiration gnawing at us is really ghosts trying to get us to use their stories—now our stories—to try and fix things. The only problem is, if we fail, their unfinished business becomes ours.
We are entirely made up of stories. Everything up to this point has collided, combined, grown, and evolved to make us, and this is true of everything from our DNA to the life stories that ensured our existence. The ghosts screaming at us in the night are reminding us not to forget that their stories have become our stories, and that these stories are not over. They continue with us. And sometimes we have to change them.
Stories hold immense power. They are not some frivolous thing that we use to entertain kids. They govern our lives. The stories we tell ourselves determine how we live our lives – what roles do I fill? What kind of person am I? Where am I going? Where did I begin? Where do I think I’ll end?
From Ghosts: Vol. 9 –
I am truly starting to wonder if I don’t exist and I’m just a bunch of ghosts trying to coexist in one broken body.
And the thing is, no one person owns these stories. We are all keepers, and there’s a constant push and pull of narratives happening. Stories are shared. The collective narratives a society has exerts more control over it than any government or police state. And because we are born into stories that have lived much longer than we have, there are plot points present that may not serve us. So how can we harness the power of the stories that govern our lives?
How will the story change with us?
Vol. 8 –
The odds are high
That your job will also be unfinished
It is likely that you will be
The creak, the groan, the hum, the sigh, the cry, the singer
The maker of footsteps in the night
You will be the noise
That jolts children out of their bed saying
“Something is not right”
If the story we tell ourselves is that everything is fine, everything will stay exactly as it is. For better or worse. Nothing will be rectified. But if we tell ourselves that the current story is an injustice, that it’s harmful, that it’s wrong, there’s at least a chance that it will change. Changing the story is step one for justice.
And this is the reason they’re so afraid of artists. We challenge stories. We take them, embody them, make things beautiful that were not meant to be so that they can’t look away. We can look on a stage, or in a book, or see a movie, or take in a painting, and we see ourselves. We see what we do and don’t want to be and the kind of life we want to have. And divinity is having the power to change your path. That’s the power we have.
From Ghosts: Vol. 9 –
The purpose of light is not to banish and conquer demons, to burn them with holy water, to send them to a place of eternal torture… Light walks face first into literal hell holes and tears open portals to the other side so that no one is silenced. Light sets fires in the middle of the night to make absolutely fucking sure that nobody misses the dangerous, spectacular burning flames…Light is fucking pissed right now.
So as we step into what may well be a dark, heavy, and uncertain time, how do we honor the ghosts that keep us up at night? How do we hear the beauty in their howls and take on their unfinished business as our own? There is power here. How do we claim it?
Vol. 9 –
We are creatures of light. But that doesn’t mean we live in the light.
If we are headed for a revolution, it will start and end with us. No one will fight a war they don’t believe in, but they’ll risk it all if they think it’s worth it. People are powerful like that. And wars start and end with stories.
Artists were not put on this Earth as a fun addendum to the important stuff. We were put here to ensure that everyone stands a chance. It is our job to make sure that every screaming ghost is heard.
From Ghosts: The Final Volume –
I am sending you forth into the darkness. To be witnesses, to be storytellers, be burning flames in the pitch black. Walk in darkness always.
So no matter what happens next, we haunt. And we will not be silenced.
From Vol. 8 and Vol. 9 –
Are you angry yet?
