Snipping Off the Loose Ends (Patreon)

Happy Monday, dear patrons! 

Storytime continues this week on the aftermath of the creation sprint you've all been following along with for Le Numéro Barbette. 

While I originally drafted the writing you all get this week for M/W/F again, I decided to double back and try something different: I chopped up the writings this week into slightly shorter posts, and these shorter selections are being sent out as a daily post again, at 9:00am EST. 

It's the same amount of writing that I had initially prepared, just in smaller bites.

I'm curious to hear at the end of this week, or early next week, your thoughts and preferences on post length! I'll be asking you all with a poll on this subject early next week, so no need to answer right now, please and thank you! Sure, sometimes I won't have endless things to say about a certain subject – but I'm curious to know that – when I'm being longwinded with the telling of an anecdote or story –  if it's enjoyable to have small regular bites, or if we like having longer stretches of writing to sit down with. 

So – without further ado – let's get back to our misadventures:

* * * * * *
Time dribbled by.

Dorothee sent no further updates, and we were nearing the end of the “he [Gregory, Zurich producer] will let me know in a day or two!” window she had specified in our last communication.

No response came into my inbox from Jean-Jacques Clerico or the Moulin Rouge.

On the Jean-Pierre / Cirque de Demain front, Instagram taunted me with the unique brand of cruelty only read receipts can deliver:

Seen 3 hours ago … 

Seen 20 hours ago … 

Seen 2 days ago …  

Finally, crumbling under the mounting pressure of my own combined neediness + inability to tolerate further limbo after everything that has gone on these past 2 months, I crafted what I thought was the a neutral, casual, unobtrusive follow-up to Jean-Pierre to try to re-start the conversation: 

<< Do you think the Festival will be able to run in person this year*? >> I asked.

(NB: *The pandemic edition of Cirque de Demain had been a filmed event that was broadcast … somewhere … instead of the usual live show at the Cirque Phénix tent.  Troy had actually been contacted by Jean-Pierre last year, asking if either of us would be interested in participating in this pandemic version of the Festival – but alas, I was in Vancouver shooting on Motherland: Fort Salem and Troy was in Atlanta (I think?) working on one of the string of big movies he’s been landing. It simply wasn’t possible.)

An answer came within hours:

<< I do not know … but you can apply online. It will be better with another discipline than the one you performed the first one >>

Ah. There it is, I thought. Deflation set in instantly.

 Okay – so, it was broad interest, I told myself. Shuffling back through the stretched out conversation in my mind, I tried to mentally tie off the loose ends of speculation that had been accumulating. 

Hold on, added a plaintiff voice in my head. But there’s a prompt to apply online! 

Why would I apply twice…? I told it. Is that even allowed? 

Why not, though ...? The little voice said. Wouldn't it feel good to go with a solo project...?

He likes the concept, at least generally, I conceded. An aerial version of this could be really interesting ... it would speak more directly to what Barbette originally did, too. Definitely like that.

I ran some quick numbers in my head. 

It’s mid-September. 

The deadline to apply for Cirque de Demain is October 15th for the 2022 festival. 

Troy and I might have pulled together the duo act we made for the 40th festival in an obscenely short amount of time.

I  just did the same thing with  Le Numéro Barbette.

But wait, Ess ... That's barely 4 weeks, you nutter.

Part of my brain chewed over these unreasonable numbers from every possible angle it could imagine, looking for a loophole in the fabric of space-time that might allow for truly impossible (as opposed to 'mostly impossible') things to happen. 

It was some bad, cruel math that my mind was making me do.

But in the background to these mathematical musings, this scheduling insanity, distant thoughts began to gather like thunderclouds on the horizon. My mind drifted back to when Troy and I brought our unlikely duo act to the Cirque Phénix, the giant big-top tent in which the Festival Mondial du Cirque de Demain is now held every year ...

* * * * * [ to be continued]