Author: Emilia
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The Last Four Months
Part 1: School’s Out Flung into the air suspended above the world emancipated from the forces of reality for this exaggerated moment I see the land below me, firm and eternal, the buzzy habit of humanity, and gravity bides her time— I put one foot in front of the other and with each step the… Read more
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Lviv
After a sleepless, waterless night on a Poland local—the train stopping every nine minutes and the carriage lit up like a midnight wander through a Walmart—and after five hours bracing my feet against the sticky floor of the waiting room in the Polish border town station to keep my seat, which was tilted like a… Read more
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Michael the Judge
There is a park I have passed many times and have always been curious about. Recently, walking to meet Jared (Jared was here), I walked through it and into the little round church therein, which has always sparked my curiosity through the tram window. I was greeted by a man in perhaps his late 50s,… Read more
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Yes, Ok, Why Not?
It has been 18 months to the day since I landed in Berlin. Today was also my last day of graduate school classes (a couple of small workshops notwithstanding). I leave this period of my life exhilarated. Something has been shifting since this program began, and something has now shifted. My classmates have noticed and… Read more
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Neither Here Nor There
The scream of the tram is a flock of whistles outside my window. I am halfway across the room before I see Berlin. I walk past a car with its sliding door open. A child inside cries and it pulls me off the sidewalk. The adults around the car are the child’s caretakers. No one… Read more
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Manifesto*
Theatre is a collective reaching for mystery and truth. Theatre is the grandchild of ecstatic and mysterious rites. Theatre is ritual. Theatre artists prepare for this ritual by practicing listening to the mysterious, by embodying the mystery, and by ritualizing that embodiment. Theatre artists prepare for this ritual by creating space using ancient technologies that… Read more
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Hosanna
How to write a cry? How to write a screama sobthe grief that seepslike green oil frommy pressed heart? How to write a prayera pleaa spell of protection? How to write an open hand,shelter and signalto stay the fistthe gasthe grenadethe gun? The battering ramthe speeding tenebrous truckthe wall of riot shieldsthe helmets and the… Read more
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The Foghorn and the Parakeet
This morning’s heavy fog is bright. I sit in the cloud, up here on the sixth floor, and watch the air around me shift from white to gold to rosy pink. Just overhead, soft grey shadows race down the hill to the Tagus River, where every minute a sonorous foghorn sings out. It sounds gently,… Read more
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Kyiv
The week before classes started, I went to Kyiv (not Kiev, which is the Russian spelling). My friend Jared is a journalist I know from our Minneapolis days, and he’s been living there for the last two years. Twice last year he came to visit Berlin when the frequent air raids started to fray his… Read more
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Life on the Internet: Thoughts on Social Media & AI
Tl;dr: I don’t use either, and that’s on purpose. In 2011, I was working for Pensacola Opera in Florida. I was staying in a house and driving a car owned by opera patrons who’d taken a four-month cruise around the world, fulfilling a lifelong dream and helping out a few young artists in the process.… Read more