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thursday.
Having a bit of a blue day. Money's running really low, and although my girlfriend can cover for us until payday, I hate when she has to step in like that. I know it's just how it is in our situation, but how it is sucks, to be honest.
Also got some mail from my social worker that I have too much anxiety to open on my own, so it has to wait until my girlfriend comes home which in turn gives me even more anxiety. Great...
If nothing else, I started the day out with some writing, which is good, but am now feeling uninspired and too stressed for any real work, so I thought I'd rather cultivate these blues a little.
I self-published a book along with a friend of mine in 2019. It's an anthology of various texts, poems, flash fiction and short stories, all inspired by the ballet, Napoli by Bournonville. Or, rather, Nikolaj Hübbe's reimagining of it. The difference is quite stark, as you can see below - the first clip is from the original production, filmed in the 1980's, the other is from Hübbe's production, filmed in 2014 when it had its world premiere:
We worked on that book, titled what would be "A Storm Is A-Brewing" in English, for over a year, collecting all our texts little by little, and waited with publishing it until early summer, 2019, although it was actually done a couple of months earlier because the RDB was staging Napoli that year. We sent a copy to all the lead dancers as a premiere gift.
One of my main inspirations while writing the book was colours, the stark colours of Hübbe's production really spoke to me, so vibrant and alive. The pas de six, which is honestly the best part of the ballet, if you ask me, inspired a lot of different texts with colours for titles and themes. Burnt Orange, Summer Yellow and my favourite, inspired by my favourite variation, Greyish Bluish. It was the first text I wrote for the book and it remains my favourite, juxtapositioning the warmth and colourfulness of Southern Italy with the dreary grey winter in Denmark and what it symbolizes, to me: depression.
This variation was the basis for it, with Susanne Grinder dancing:
The whole pas de six + the ending of the ballet is available here.
I've translated two of the four pas de six ladies variations-inspired texts into English, Greyish Bluish and Burnt orange, still missing the last short story of the three, Summer Yellow, which chronologically is actually in the middle, and then the separate poem, Happy Green for Holly's green girl variation, but those might join in soon enough. If I find the time on the other side of the holidays.
I stay proud of that book. I think it's more a piece of art than literature as such and we put a lot of ourselves into it, both A. and I. It cemented our friendship and although we don't talk as much as we would probably like, every time we do, it's like being back to that beginning. Creating together.
I really miss writing in Danish, but for now writing in English is just easier, so I'm sticking to that. Anything that makes life easier.
Like Napoli.
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