How to be Dangerous

The Sacre Coeur rises over the buildings outside of my balcony like a marvellous alien bosom, the nipple of Paris. Artificial lighting flatters the normally dirty white exterior and at night time it carries an aura of blasphemous mystery. A mosque? A boob? A nice church on the hill?

I don't mind sitting alone on my balcony- but it does get more problematic when you are falling in love with someone and stuck on a little balcony with them. A fine time to go into the details of your dead fish of a romantic life Harlan. On my balcony in Paris with a glass of wine, watching the Sacre Coeur....chin-deep in shit. I don't go out nowadays. I want to curl like a fetus into a womb of books and good wine and maybe the occasional David Bowie/Janis Joplin/Prince remix. Anyone out there want to lend me a copy of Musicology, by the way? I'm feeling a little lost without it.

I know that I came onto this blog to do something. Ah, write an entry about the course, perhaps?
It's a good thing that I am so responsible. I know how to get things done. People always say "Harlan, you sure know how to set and meet goals!" Lately, this sort of phrase has been used in a less flattering way. The other day M. le Professeur said "People with strong will power are fucking horrible people, no matter what country you are in." He gave me a sideways glance. Of course my anal retentive behavior always kept me in good standing with my academic work and I always stayed in good physical condition, ate well, etc.

Like clockwork, you know. Or any other mechanized and un-lifelike image you would like to invoke. The french students, rioting in 68, had a cry of protest that went something like "Metro, boulo, booboo." Which translates roughly as "Metro, Work, space out." It's much better in French. Why did I start down this road?

Hm. Lets back up a bit. When I began my studies with M le Professeur, I decided after 3 or 4 days to quit the school. I despised and distrusted everything that was happeneing. But then something clicked, somewhere in the second week. I began to feel more alive after class, and I would walk the streets for hours at night and dream about what had happened in the school. Something was getting prodded inside me and I couldn't be sure what it was at the time. Something I think I had learned to ignore for a very long time.

Metro Boulou Bouo Boo.
Right. And so sitting on this balcony over Monmartre and falling in love again for the first time in a very long time I remember why it is the first time in a very long time because suddenly I am a laughing idiot and a depressed maniac. Gloriously out of control.

REALLY DANGEROUS

The Bouffon does a parody of a bastard. Not a little bastard. A big bastard. Cheney, Hitler. Hussein. Jiang Qing.

I go up and do my parody of Jiang Qing. M le Prof stops me.

"Bon. Is he light? Or does he break our balls?"
-"He breaks my balls."
"Bon. You are breaking everyone's balls. I want you to try something. Snort like a pig."

NHGUF NGHUF NHGUF

"Do we love him more when he does his parody, or when he snorts like a pig?"
-"Pig."
"You have to have the pleasure to parody a bastard in a light way. When you are heavy, militant, aggressive, you make us uncomfortable with your parody. We must love you loving your parody. If you parody the bastard in a light way, and we love you, then you are really dangerous, Then the bastard, if he is watching, will want to kill you because you are dangerous, because you have power. When the performer is heavy, when they play like John Wayne in Vietnam, then they break our balls and they are like a little shitty idea. The poo of the dog at the gay Paris haridressers.
Bon. Thank you, goodbye."

BOOM.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

"ugh.' Me staring at the Sacre Coeur, hoping it will turn into a missile silo and blow me off my balcony for the good of all. "Maybe I just need to take some time off from this school. It's exhausting, going onstage every day and being a flop."

-He stops actors, he tells them to shut up. It is because when the actor stops, they are interesting. Fixed point.

"My god. You finally, just now, after four months, made sense of that for me."

-Huh?

"Fixed point is that. It's to stop and listen to the audience. To look for what you need to give next. Thank you."

-No problem.

I look back out at the nipple of Paris and have another swig of beer (beer tonight, not wine. I'm not feeling so classy. Or maybe I've just had a little bit too much wine every night for the last two weeks in a row. Either/or. This charming person, just like that, randomly launched into an explanation of one of the most basic concepts of this school that has elided me for four months.

You, reader, have no clue what I am talking about, perhaps? Perhaps this blog makes no sense any longer.

This school makes no sense unless you're there. That is that. It doesn't work to write about it. It's too delicate and too subtle to be written about. It may just sound like a place where you go get abused doing impossible excercises but it's not.

It's an infinitely delicate little spiderweb and I've been shitty on it for a while now with this blog, taking the wild bits and exploiting them for shock value. So I should just come out and clear that up. There is no cruelty or humiliation in this school, as far as I'm concerned. And if anything, I am a little too young and a bit too inexperienced to actually understand the subtlety of what is being asked of me.

But one thing is for sure, it is making me listen a bit more carefully.