This past week I chose the instruments that will be thrown into our theatrical mix — a set of big, mystical-sounding chimes, a cajon (a wooden box-shaped drum) and a xylophone! I’m eagerly awaiting the latter two in the mail, and all this along with my guitar, the voices of my cast (not to mention our newest cast addition will be bringing in her viola!) will make our soundscape. It’s important to get the toys early so that you have plenty of time to play with them, you see… :)

Last week we also had a series of smaller rehearsals focusing on character work. This is particularly necessary since various members of the cast are playing ideas-made-human. They feel like flesh and blood, but their actions represent much larger movements of knowledge, myth, and history…  One thing this led to was my finally spending some time with Paul Gauguin.

Thanks to www.tate.org.uk

I know I have referred to Gauguin as an unreliable narrator, and while that’s true, that’s watering down my feelings towards him a good bit. I suppose every one needs a scape goat, and well… it’s possible he’s been mine.

The reasons that Gauguin drives me crazy are simple:

1) Vincent never physically harmed himself until he lived with Gauguin. Nor was he in an asylum before then. And while I’m aware that doesn’t prove he’s to blame, I do think things may have been quite different if some else had been in Gauguin’s place.

2) Gauguin’s accounts of his time with Vincent are inconsistent, full of myth and exaggeration, and essentially unreliable. This is also done with the desire of creating mystery, which bothers me as a researcher and someone dedicated to truth.

3) Gauguin and Vincent lived together for a measly nine weeks, and yet they are always hung side by side in museums, and basically are tied up in each other’s reputations forever.

4) Personal reasons: I don’t like his work, he’s pretty obviously self-involved, he slept around while he was married with five children (whom he left behind in Copenhagen, while he ran off to Tahiti), etc etc. I just don’t like him.

However, this past week an actor and I dug around in his childhood and early life, and I found numerous facts enlightening about him. One was that he was born in Paris, moved to Peru when he was three (his father died on the voyage), moved back to France at 7 years old. In Peru, he was raised in the house of upper-class, distant relatives. In Paris, he no longer had servants. He became a sailor at 17, and his mother died at 19. He continued sailing until he was 22.

There is dislocation and loss all over Gauguin’s biography. There is no doubt he had difficulty pinning down his own identity, and this is what led him to gain an interest in myth, in romanticizing his loss of self into mystery. It is also undoubtedly what led him towards egotism – after all he had little that was static and dependable in his life.

While I haven’t suddenly started admiring him, I do think I understand Gauguin a bit better now. Everyone comes from something and somewhere…

It’s time for me to climb into bed now, I got a busy week of fundraising, dancing, playing, singing and blocking ahead of me!

All my love, until next week…