Words on a Whim

a collection of musings

Recent Posts

    • Honesty in motion: A review of an evening of dance with Sofar Sounds

      Sofar Sounds’ latest intimate dance event, curated by Laurie Case, was a spectacular show featuring four artists grappling with what it means to be honest in an art form that is sometimes used as a way to hide and pretend. 

      The first performer, Saèl Heesemans, begins their piece ‘Home is Where the Ribs Are’ with a moment of stark familiarity and a sense of intimacy, looking the audience piercingly in the eye, inviting connection by giving their hat to one viewer before taking off their jacket, socks, and shoes, and finally removing their shirt. This leaves them in baggy jeans. They place their hands on two corners of rib – upper chest, lower midriff, and then began a sinuous embodied conversation with their identity, their heartbeat, through exaggerated poses, weaving in and out of the floor, picking themselves back up again, and ending with a faraway contented smile. They thread through their body with determination and precision, culminating in moments of wild abandon and release. After this moving piece, they reflected, poignantly, that the first time they could feel their heartbeat so closely in the press of their palm, was after top surgery.

      The second piece was ‘Brothers,’ a duet between Justin De Jager and Tom Donkersloot of Threading Theatre. It begins with a wave of joyful expression; the duo take turns breaking, cheering each other on, hyping each other up, feeling out the space with dizzying feats. Then, a sudden shift. As they clasp hands, about to embrace, they appear to get stuck together, a shaky shuddering motion taking over first their linked hands, then their arms, and finally their whole bodies, creating a ripple effect in their expressions. Their faces widen into open mouthed projections of alternating awe, confusion, surprise, and perhaps, even horror or unease. Thus begins their seamless, intricate threading. They weave themselves into shapes and weight-sharing moments on the brink of levitation. Increasingly, their attempts become so difficult – so pretzled up are they – that their breaths become authentically strenuous, they are red-faced, their muscles tremble. At one point, it takes them two attempts to achieve the next pose, leading to audible gasps and satisfied hums from the audience when they accomplish this feat. I remarked afterwards that it was so refreshing to see effort made visible in dance. Frequently in traditional concert dance, much of the strenuousness required is intentionally disguised, and withheld. This makes it much easier to detach from the raw reality of the emotional content being portrayed. In this piece, however, I felt completely invested. I was rooting for the movers. My thoughts were totally with their endeavor; there was no chance of dissociation. It was as if we, as an audience, were also grasped in their holds, tethered by their threads.

      The third performer, Seirian Griffiths, engaged in a riveting and playful improvisation which toyed with notions of porousness, impermeability, and the malleable nature of everyday life. He breaks the silence by using his voice, engaging in a reflective spoken word improvisation whilst demonstrating skilled micro-moments of gravity defying virtuosic motion. Moving sinuously across mediums, he ricochets in the space, turning mundane experiences (getting his shoes cobbled, opening his wardrobe to multiple identical items of clothing, thinking about the meaning of the word “threshold”) into sublime conjecture. His periodic use of a veiled curtain becomes an opportunity to invite a film-like quality into a piece that just so happens to take place in a Fuji film store studio in Covent Garden. (Seirian had not practiced in this space prior). He brings both much needed humor and levity into the room, as well as deeply philosophical questions about how we perceive, mold, shape, pass through, and push up against boundaries – in space, in our relationships, in our bodies, and even in the corners of our minds. It is piquant to see him break boundaries at the onset – the invisible fourth wall, and the idea that dance and verbal speeches are quite often kept distinct – before pondering this concept of testing limits. I was fascinated to discover that he had prepared for this improvisational solo by trying to intentionally “stop myself from pre-planning” and to instead stay open and curious and alive in the performance. He remarked that his improvisations become more authentic when he has viewers present, because he feels he must commit to his choices 100%. He is responsible for his audience believing in him. 

      The final performer, Andrea Bou Othmane, appears onstage adrenalin-filled, eager to start, brimming with effervescence. Then, as he begins to move, starting with a spiraling turn that repeats as a motif several times throughout the piece, a sense of calm washes over me like an ocean wave. His arms move as if simultaneously attached to and yet separate from his body, windmilling, flying, soaring, as if of their own volition. It is as if they are tendrils, neurons firing in the mind made visible. As his movements become frenetic, acrobatic, almost thrash-like at times, I feel compelled by his surety, his quiet confidence, his reach. He circles his face with his hands, sometimes with reverence and care, and sometimes with a sense of brutal ferocity, a caress becoming a closed fist. Palpably, I feel his need to move as something as intrinsic as his breath. Later, he remarked that his thoughts move so quickly that he has to tire himself out with movement to the point of exhaustion or he cannot lie still: it will not be authentic. The second I see him lie down, I am transfixed watching his ribs rise and fall, screaming out for air. Seeing his visceral need for movement to the point of burnout – the necessity to share, to process, to agitate, to explain all that we are as humans – reminds me again exactly why dance is so captivating.

      Dance reminds us, beckons us, again and again, to wrestle with, to struggle with, to play with, and to connect with, our humanity. Movement continually calls us not to shy away from uncomfortable truths but to embrace them. And that is vital.

    • On Dancing for Joy! (And not to be truly great)

       I am currently on a fantasy kick.

      I began reading Ninth House earlier this week after borrowing it from the library. I’m a huge DarlingtonxStern supporter already; I’m hooked. The Secret History by Donna Tartt was a favorite book of mine in my teenage years and Bardugo’s book reminds me of it, but it’s also startlingly different and exquisitely darker.

      I’m late to the game reading this book, I know (a quick aside: this is notorious for me. I’m late to a lot of trends, just like I’m late to everything, including becoming a dancer which will be the focus of this article).

      Keep reading, if you’re still with me. I’m getting there. It’s going to make sense.

      In Ninth House, without giving too much away, “talent” is a central theme. Questions are posed about it’s murky origins: when is it duly or unduly earned, when is it natural, do all have the privilege to acquire it? To explore it?

      A passing quote took hold of me and still hasn’t let me go. A supporting character says to our FMC Alex Stern:

      “I will not accuse you of false humility. I trust you to know your own talents.” … “The world is quite hard on artists who are good but not truly great. So. You wish what? Stability? A steady job?”

      I really do wrestle with this. I know I’m decent – good but not great – as a dance artist. I’m self-aware enough to see this, and yet I still care so deeply that I’m not better, to the point where I think it actually stops my dancing from being better. Because at times, due to all the pressure, there’s a lack of joy behind it.

      To explain a little bit about this conundrum I am thinking back to a particular moment in time:

      In 2019, I found out a so-called (at the time; thank goodness no longer) “friend” of mine had told someone else I’m close to “Iris is kind of a bad and awkward dancer, yikes,” after seeing me perform in college. This of course wasn’t the only criticism I’ve received, and I don’t take all of them to heart like this. However, it hit home because this comment was so opposite to how she acted towards me, to the praise she levied my way to my face.

      To be fair, I knew at the time that realistically, yes, I wasn’t good or even great. I’d started taking dancing seriously only in 2016, at the age of 19, and wasn’t super technically trained. (Also during this particular show, I would like to note that I had mono and was recovering from a badly sprained ankle). Still, it was a huge knock to my confidence. I’d been cast on stage. I was putting myself out there. It’s an incredibly vulnerable feat for anyone. And getting knocked down like that…well, it hurts.

      So, it stung. It still does. And what hurts even more than all that is the fact that, try as I might, I no longer often trust people who now say my dancing is good or even great. I find it extremely hard to trust my friends or my loved ones, even if they perhaps genuinely mean it. And that’s sad. Because this same girl was so kind to my face, and so degrading when I wasn’t looking, it has left its mark on my faith in both myself and others.

      What makes me sad most of all, is that I’m realizing something puzzling on its surface but obvious underneath. Simultaneously, my lack of trust has become interlinked with a desperate seeking of validation (cringe). I so wholeheartedly want to be great, want no one to criticize me in that way ever again, that I’ve forgotten how to dance for joy in every instance. Of course, it’s partly the fault of our times – dance is so linked now to social media, to influencer culture, to visibility, and highlight reels, and shock factor. People get noticed because of how many followers or likes they have. But when (and more importantly, why the fuck) did I stop caring if I even felt happy when dancing and only cared if other people approved?

      I’m trying to let go of it. If one person likes what I do and everyone else hates it but I’m experiencing joy, I’m having fun, then screw it. That’s exactly how I’m going to keep dancing. For joy.

      And you should too! 🧙‍♀️

    • Addis Café – A restaurant review

      Situated almost inconspicuously, amongst various other food stores (promising a wide variety – fried chicken, falafel, and burritos) and close to various barbershops, is a gem, Addis Cafe. The name of the eatery is written in blocky bold white text against a maroon red background. Next to the text are two smiling faces, heads tilted against the backdrop of a wisp of the Ethiopian flag – bright green, yellow, and red. Written below the English sign, the cafe’s name is written in Amharic, in white text situated against a walnut brown background.

      Frank and I approach eagerly, extraordinarily hungry after taking the Bakerloo line all the way east and spending an hour at the Dominican barbershop. Sitting relaxed outside of the restaurant, in a small wooden chair, is a kind-faced 50 something year old Ethiopian man. He gets up to greet us warmly, and gestures for us to enter the cozy cafe, with a beautiful contrast of rich tones – walnut wood floors, white painted brick walls, and colorful glass bottle lights hanging from the ceiling in the front window. There is an easeful energy about this man, a sense of youthfulness in his demeanor and gait despite his maturity. 

      He leads us inside and we sit at a 2-person table. There is a middle-aged woman beside us, sipping water and picking up a to-go order. As she leaves, our host beckons us to sit down at the larger 4-person table closer to where the middle-aged woman had been sitting. “More comfortable,” he assures us. I’m struck by the warmth that I do not find so easily in some other eateries in London. 

      I sit on the same side as Frank, on the comfy fabric bench. Sitting beside him instead of facing him always feels more natural to me, anyway. This also means we can share the food more easily, and we have a view looking out at the counter,  behind which are adorned funny messages such as “give me the coffee and no one gets hurt,” “relax, everyone’s crazy here,” and “there’s no wifi here, pretend it’s 1996. Talk to each other.” When I go to wash my hands in the bathroom, I find a framed article about the first aeroplane flight in Addis Ababa.

      The cafe is snug, and it is as if we are transported into someone’s home kitchen rather than a restaurant.  When Frank asks the kind man how long this has been their restaurant, we begin to understand exactly why this is what the decorative comfortable interior invokes. He recounts that this space became the cafe it is today during the COVID-19 pandemic years. But, he says, he and his wife have had businesses on this property for many years, and the space has been through many iterations: it was an electronics store most recently and before that a repair shop. He reflects that what the couple realized they wanted after the pandemic was something more easeful, more in line with running a business based on passion and comfort rather than pure necessity.

      “The restaurant is only open 5 hours each day. It’s all food that we eat ourselves, anyway.” 

      The owner tells us he has been vegan for 30 years. Frank, attentive and inquisitive, knows what question he wants to ask. “Why did you first become vegan?” he inquires.

       The man begins to tell a vivid story. He states that 30 years ago, he was a student in Sweden. He recounts going to a local market for his goods, produce, and perishables often. One day, he reports that he saw an abnormally large cow, being paraded around the market square. He recalls feeling uneasy, seeing how grotesquely large this cow was. He asked the man parading around the animal, “how old is this cow?” The owner of the cafe tells us he was rightfully shocked after he was told that the cow was only a year old. He realized this – that the cow had been gorged, made fat simply to fill pockets and line stomachs with quick glutinous satisfaction – but at a cost to the animal’s health. “That is no life,” the man tells us now. From that moment on, our owner declined to eat meat or animal products any longer. We both begin to wonder at whether this man’s diet has contributed to his youthful glow.

      A woman, also in her 50s, also with a vibrant energy and warm smile, emerges from the kitchen. We realize she must be his wife. She comes over to bring us water with fresh herbs and we order the mouth-watering sounding dish which is a selection of all their specialties on a base of injera with extra on the side. There is so much care evident in every meticulous detail of this cafe. As we wait for the food, I continue to take in all the sights around us, and relish being at a cafe where the food is made with intention, not superfluously. 

      When she arrives with our food, our eyes become round saucers. The fresh vegetables (cabbage, carrots, kale) melt in our mouths, as do the legumes and potatoes, rich and yet delicately laden with spices against our tongues. The injera is spongy, rich, with a delicious tang. There are mountains of this mouth-watering delicacy, and we almost finish it all, but save a little to eat later, eager to have something of this experience to take home with us. We marvel at the taste of the injera, and the owner asks us, “had either of you eaten Ethiopian food before?” I had, I muse, and I think back to the restaurant friends and I had frequented several times in Middletown, Connecticut, tasting the memory of the sweet honey wine we drank on my tongue. I had forgotten how delicious Ethiopian cuisine was, how much I had missed out all these years without having it. Frank had not tried the food before, but I knew that he was now, definitively, going to be a regular eater of Ethiopian fare. Our owner brings us over the miniscule injera grain, showing us how small it is, how you have to look so closely, otherwise it disappears into his palm.

      I am so grateful to have found this hidden gem. 

      We promise to return soon, and I cannot wait.

    • Moving Day – a short creative non-fiction piece

      We awoke on the mattress on the floor. We still had a few boxes left, but most of our belongings were already bubblewrapped and tightly stacked up in storage, or discarded if deemed unnecessary. I walked around declaring, “I am no longer attached to material things.” I marveled at just how much stuff I had accumulated in the past 5 years, wondering exactly how we had fit so many objects, shoes, clothes, and trinkets, into just 750 square feet.

      I also marveled at just how easy it seemed for Frank to compartmentalize emotion as easily as he could compartmentalize our household supplies into boxes. And I wondered why I felt like my emotions – apprehension, confusion, excitement, fear, frustration, despondence – were spilling over into every crevice of the apartment, one with the endless clouds of dust that had begun to coat the insides of our nostrils and tear ducts during the week. 

      We began sweeping the dust particles in earnest, only for them to multiply and fly around in defiant protest at being disturbed. I wrapped the last of our plates, cups, bowls, and glass water bottles. As I wrapped, I imagined wrapping myself up, too, into the tightly wound congregation of bubble wrap and tape, and also putting myself inside the box with “FRAGILE! HANDLE WITH CARE!” written on all four sides in permanent black marker. I felt like I would break at any moment. The only solution was to keep “doing stuff.”(Is this the only solution to the endless confusion of existence, the apathy, the lethargy, the inertia? To keep writing to-do lists, to keep “doing stuff” until we run out of “stuff to do?”)

      We drank kombucha, a shower beer, and a half-finished bottle of ginger ale. No actual food. The lonely last remaining blackberry white claw (from a late night/early morning – 3am- 4-pack impulse buy during our final Big Night Out last Saturday after our leaving party), I emptied into the sink. A strange concoction of probiotics settling in the stomach added to the disorienting nausea of leaving our home. An eerie emptiness settled over me that had nothing to do with the space in my stomach from not properly eating real meals over the course of the last week. 

      Next it was time to go to the storage unit, where we would be leaving the last of the boxes containing the wrapped utensils, The Holy Vacuum, and various prized and less important last minute miscellaneous items. We were passing them on to Frank’s younger brother. (Is this all that we really do as living beings? Pass on things – items, knowledge, stories, problems, emotions – to each other – until we run out of “stuff to pass on?” until our “stuff” becomes someone else’s to carry?) The folks at the storage unit the day prior had needlessly reminded us with a pointed finger and a raised brow, “absolutely no getting frisky on the premises.”

      Bewildered, we agreed, “that won’t be a problem.” I wondered to myself with a shudder, had people really decided, we just have to have sex in this storage unit, right now!? That just seemed to me, to be, not only wildly unsanitary, but also wildly unsexy. When we dropped our items off and alerted the same people we’d spoken to the previous day in the office that we were finished, they spoke to us through the plexi-glass, masks on, gesturing a thumbs-up. “Someone in there has hantavirus?” Frank asked, laughing nervously. Maybe someone had got it due to “getting frisky” in the storage units. Hantavirus was all we’d been reading about on news sites and instagram meme accounts alike the past few days. Another sense of frenzied panic was yet again taking over New York (while writing this story, NYC had moved on to the terrors of Diarrhea Lettuce). I’d told my best friends jokingly (but also I guess semi-seriously, who really knew), that if another pandemic hit, I might just want to end it all. At that point, I might just believe Higher Powers didn’t want me – or anyone else navigating (re-)entering the current job market for that matter – to thrive. 

      Now, onto something that kind of did make me feel like life is worth living: witnessing a dear friend becoming a radiant mother. We went to see her and her tiny baby, as well as her husband, and her own mama, who is visiting. It’s just so hard for me to wrap my head around the goddesses that women and people who give birth are. The immense strength that just lives inside them, springing forth. Their capability to get through such a HUGE medical event. That at the end they become so magnificently attuned to this little life they have created – this is an all-encompassing beautiful sight. My friend describes feeling the moment that this immense protective instinct kicked in, just taking hold of her, as if nothing else matters any longer. 

      We eat cheesecake and I hold the baby. I can’t drink my coffee, for fear of my clumsiness. I envision, in horrifying vivid mental technicolor, accidentally spilling hot liquid on this baby and ruining his life forever, scarring him as well as his dear family for the rest of their lives. It’s a smart decision that I wait to pass the baby to Frank before downing the coffee in a few gulps before we have to leave. We took an uber to our friends’. In typical New York fashion, it took 35 minutes to get there, but now, the Uber back says it will take an hour. We worry we will miss our flight if we don’t end up at the airport 3 hours before departure. 

      We don’t miss our flight, but we do end up, in the back of our Uber, having to pop the champagne we forgot someone had gifted us at our leaving party. We drink it alongside our favorite foodtruck burritos (a real meal, finally!). The only way to leave New York behind is to honor it in typical New York chaotic fashion, drunk and deliriously giddy.

    • The Beginning – An Introduction

      Committing to a beginning is notoriously difficult. Just ask Stephen King (On Writing) – “The scariest moment is always just before you start.” I much prefer to imagine myself in the middle or end stages of a project. I can see it now – a world in which the words are flowing, or no, even better, they have sprung out of my brain fully formed, sweetly perfectly shaped (as several young authors I’m irreverent towards/envious of sometimes claim has happened to them).

      I have always deemed it easier to imagine being in the midst of something, in freefall, than at the start, on the precipice. At least in the middle of the fall you are active, not passive. However my tendency to visualize myself being active while I am passive has thus far not led me to the middle of things at all. It has usually just led me to more dreaded stagnancy.

      So, I suppose, I have to will myself to instead imagine being still; being at the beginning. To see myself firmly at the passive place – the start.

      The only claim I have to coming close to achieving perfection is in the art of procrastination. You could say I’m afraid of committment, always catastrophizing anything and everything that could go wrong before anything has even happened.

      But that is all about to change. (I hope).

      Welcome to my blog – where I’ll be sharing some written excerpts that I’m going to try to gift a lovely start, middle, and end. I can’t promise they’ll all be gripping. The thought that they might not be immediately arresting to a discerning reader used to stop me from wanting to write at all.

      Now, I’m welcoming this thought as a complete lack of pressure on my shoulders. You’re not grading me, you’re not giving me a deadline, it doesn’t matter what you think. It only matters that I write! It only matters that I start at the beginning.

      So here we go.

      Here there will be a collection of written words (short fiction, personal essays, reviews etc.). All dedicated as a giant f*** you to the art of procrastination.