the BrookfieldLodge blog

Outside it feels like winter and spring is still fighting it out over who’s gonna be in control the next few months. I hope for everybodys sake that spring wins. I am so tired of freezing, beeing wet, having snow everywhere… and, oh, did I mention freezing?

I mean, I am good, I take my vitamins, my fish oil pills, I eat healthy and I wear home knitten wollen socks. I do my part. Now it would be great if nature would do it’s part, and keep winter to official winter months, and let spring have it’s way as soon as February ends. But no, somehow, someone didn’t get the memo. At some point, when I can afford it, I am either a) buying a 18k lamp and putting it in a crane outside my window or b) moving to a warmer place in winter. (I will still come back for christmas, as I need to have snow then… ) Yeah, I know, I’m being slightly demanding here now… but seriously, if everyone would just do as I say then we would all live in peace. Really.

And that was my point. Listen to what I am saying. Yes, I’m talking to you. (not you Eyal… (or Georg))

lead, follow or get out of tHe way Please

(and yes, I know how it’s spelt)

So here is another different attempt at something cool… what do we think… better or worse than the first? (again the quality isn’t great (especially of the reflections)

OK… so yesterday I watched a TV commercial. It praises a new lipstick. What I found very interesting was, that this lipstick has “multidimensional colour”. And after I stopped laughing about it, I wondered… what the hell is multidimensional colour?

I mean, we work with colour a lot, but that never came up. Maybe Kathy S. just forgot to tell us about it…

But here is your chance to express your opinion about it. What is multidimensional colour? Leave your comment!

Ok everyone, it’s time to buckle up and be honest with me!

Today I spent slaving over many different designs for imagery for my company, and I think I’ve come up with a sort of title and imagery! it is attached below, there is still alot of work to get the colours right on the red pendulum, but tell me what you think conceptually and if there are any suggestions for improvement… please take note… I have never in my life used any program to edit any images apart from resizing on ms paint and once I burnt an entire image in photoshop before realising it was wwaaaaaay too complicated for me!

I’ve put the image and the text on the same picture just for ease of uploading.

I awoke this morning to my disappointing bed and breakfast that I am forced to stay in due the sheer lack of funds I have for staying anywhere nicer, and because i need to travel halfway across the country to find a space some directing work….

I awake to an exceptionally early breakfast and intended to go back to bed but was already wide awake so decided to do a little work in my room and heard some good news about some funding for a show in a little country called Norway, that I won’t mention more about as I’m sure you’ll hear more about it soon.

After talking with Signhild I was in a very happy mood and realised that I have been in this city for 3 days already and haven’t once looked around it, so I started to walk, noticing that it’s an exceptionally cold day, I followed the crowds hoping they would lead me to the city center which it did. I arrived and discovered that leeds like every other british city that got hit heavily in the war has many buildings with historic facades but inside there is just another WH Smiths or a Boots or a Next… so to perpetuate the commercialism I am writing this sitting outside a Starbucks.

I decided to sit here because through the hustle and bustle that I realised was made up of people’s heels hitting the floor rather than any particular conversation (which I won’t read into or I’ll never get to my point). Through all of this noise I heard someone signing one of my favourite songs from the center of a large square.

So here I am sitting outside a Starbucks in the cold, listening to this guy who’s pitched up with a guitar a microphone and an amplifier. He doesn’t hit all the high notes and most of the people don’t listen or don’t care or even worse just try and ignore him and pretend he’s not there but he still thanks everyone after every song and smiles as the people go by and sings as hard as he can because he knows that satisfaction isn’t made up of making Wembley sing along he knows that he’s working as hard as he can at a job that he loves and that whenever someone drops some coins into his guitar case he has earned it and has made a small change to someone’s life.

I woke up this morning into a bed and breakfast that I chose because I wanted to travel halfway across the country to do something that I love doing, and even if it’s not the National Theatre and even if only one person sees it I am going to work just as hard for them.

I don’t have much money and I don’t have any stability or any security, but I have a job I love a woman who loves me, friends who would cross continents for me, the gratitude to give more back then I am given and the wisdom to know that these things are important, in this way I am the writer of my destiny.

To show my support of his work I bought his CD, and if you’re interested, his website it:

www.jonnywalker.co.uk

So while Eyal was struggling with his icebox and not-breakfast, and Georg was enjoying spring, the very cold and very tired-of-snow Norwegians decided to go for a bit of dancing and hopefully some nice south american warmth. In short, we signed up for Tango lessons.

Actually, for one of the presents in Signhild’s advent calendar last year, I gave her a gift certificate for Tango lessons. Not by me obviously, that would be pointless, and incredibly amusing I’m sure, but at a professional instructor. So yesterday and today we have spent 6 hours learning the basics, avoiding stepping on each others toes and trotting around in a small venue downtown Oslo, learning, as the instructor called it, proper Argentinian tango.

And it was really fun. Now I’ve never done anything like this before, so the experience of learning a dance from scratch, with the basic positions and moves, although challenging, was a truly amusing experience! But it’s very dependent on whom you’re dancing with. We swapped partners a few times during the lessons, just to get a feel for dancing with completely strange people, and it really makes you aware of the connection that you have with your partner.

Apart from that, winter seems to finally have decided to start letting the firm grip slip a little, today was the first day since way before Christmas where it was only 0 degrees outside. Hopefully this means that the snow will start melting, the sun will start shining and the weather will generally be a little nicer… this has been a very long and very cold winter.

Hope to see you guys soon… where and what are you touring Georg?

HoPing for summer soon

I arrived in Leeds at about 10:30 last night and via many interesting detours due to uncrossable motorways in the middle of the city I made it to my friend Shiri’s place at about 11:00. It was good to see Shiri although her place reminds me of the reasons that I don’t miss student accommodation… I left her’s at about 11:45 and walked to the bed and breakfast I’m staying at which took me no more than about 20 seconds (horray). Upon arrival I was shown to my room which is a nice reasonably sized double bedroom with a little sink in the corner and a T.V. that is older than me (and probably weighs more). The lady told me that they had only just turned on the radiator so it’ll take a little while to warm up… I was still awake at 3am shivering because I wasn’t aware that instead of a bed and breakfast I had actually booked myself into an icebox for a week! I eventually got to sleep (at 5am) only to wake up to my alarm clock at 8 which informed me it was breakfast…

I got dressed and went to breakfast to find a quite well cooked full English breakfast waiting for me, which for those of you who don’t know, I cannot eat due to the sheer amount of pig on the plate… well so far in my bed and breakfast experience, the bed was less than unacceptable as it was in fact a block of ice… and the breakfast was (although more than satisfactory for anyone else) unsatisfying  for me. I went to my first day of rehearsals heavily exhausted and starving hungry, not to mention the headache from the flu I’ve been resisting for the past few days. I won’t go into explaining the rehearsal day but it’s reminded me how wonderful I feel when I’m doing the thing I love! I felt fantastic all day I went out for a large lunch with the writer (where I realised how hungry I was) and we made a massive amount of progress today.

I dreaded getting back to the Bed and Breakfast of doom for another miserable night, but upon my return the same lady from last night said that they had put an electric heater in my room and that they’re going to make me vegetarian breakfasts from now on!!! I am now sitting my wonderfully comfortable warm cosy room in my pyjamas eating a banana and am going to get an early night and hope that things will continue to progress in this vein!

Thank you for listening!