Lugano

I have been waiting for many years to see where my mother lived as a teenager.  Yesterday and today I was able to follow through on this when I visited her home in Lugano Switzerland.  I am left speechless, for what I didn't expect was to find another piece of myself in a land I'd never seen.  As I walked around the mountainous landscape it felt as though I had done so before.  I saw where she slept, studied, made friends and found love for the first time.  She spent the better part of her adolescent years speaking italian and living away from home at TASIS(the american school in Switzerland).  So much of my history was there.  From here I could see how she loved Telluride so much.  The two places are very similar.  During my look around her school I had a once in a lifetime encounter...  A miracle really!  I met one of her teachers.  He taught her photography.  For the next few hours we traded stories about life and art.  He just kept telling me how beautiful my mother was, how elegant she was.  I couldn't help but cry a little bit.  As I looked around I saw my mother everywhere.  Something about the way people walked, how they were forced to move according to the way the mountains wanted them to move.  It was as if I could see the knife that carved my mother into the woman she would become.  The grind stone that would sharpen her into the explorer she fashioned herself.  I could see her face in those  I passed and the warmth of her hands in those I met.  My mother was very human, she was flawed, and she was beautiful.  She was Lugano, and she was Telluride.  She was an explorer and a mountaineer.  What's left of Fran Distefano Arsentiev will live on in me.  I am now back in Zurich.  Tomorrow I will return to the stage with my colleagues to begin the rest of our performances in Switzerland.  This experience will provide me with a strength I thought died long ago, while my family, and Telluride will keep me humble in my craft as I take new steps as a man.
With love always
Paul Distefano

A long time coming

Well we're in Vienna now!  It's been a whirl wind tour through Germany so far, filled with every emotion you can imagine.  Life on the road in Europe is a dream.  I love moving so swiftly through the old worlds that are now new.  I was walking through Vienna the other day and I realized that at some point in my walk I probably stood on the same ground as Mozart or Johann Sebastian Bach.  This place is filled with so many secrets, but they are coved with a layer of new that strips away human emotion.  Still the old place is around, just harder to see.  If you look close though it pours from the cracks in the stone buildings and streets.  Lately I've been fighting a little cold.  It makes me feel sluggish, and my body doesn't hold any sexiness.  That will pass though.  My movement is by default very big and bold.  I would like to make it more direct and snappy (that's a strange thought).  The work is going well.  I am looking forward to doing more shows....  Ooh, got to go, life is calling
Ciao

Lessons

Yesterday was hard.  I've been learning that even if your intentions are in the right place people will still take you the way they want to take you.  You can say everything in the right way and it can be completely wrong.  It's disheartening to know that you can try so hard to communicate and fail miserably.
That's how a felt all yesterday.  Now I can look back and see that there is no such thing as a correct way to say something.  That when we give advice it is only because we care, but that if someone doesn't take it the way you intended to give it, then the fault is on both parties.
After yesterday I have learned two things.  One, only voice your opinion when asked.  Otherwise it won't be valued or warranted, even if you preemptively ask for permission to critique.  And two, if your having a hard time fitting into a new circle of friends or colleagues, then perhaps you shouldn't try so hard to squeeze in, and allow them to come into your circle when they are ready.
Right now I feel saddened that I can't connect with my new community in a stronger way.  I also know that this is a phase, and that I need to be forbearing while my new community figures out what I'm all about.  Lastly, I care, and I will continue to care.  The circumstances of my life were only in my wildest dreams until a few months ago, and I'm not going to give up.  I will survive, and I will thrive.
I'm here!

Isolation, Written July 2011

I spent, well spend so much time isolating myself.  I realized today that I have always needed to be overly competitive because I needed to find out who I was as an individual.  The problem is that it evolved into me isolating myself from the rest of my life.  I love my work, and it has become my life, it has quite possibly consumed me.  in the next few months I am going to no longer isolate, and instead I am going to incorporate.  Instead of finding out who I am I now more interested in where I come from and how I am connected to it.  My family, my friends, my home.  My work might not be about who I am, but instead where I come from. It might be about how I'm connected to the world, and who connects to me?

Well it's been far too Long

Well there is so much going on in the Life of Magic these days.  I've been training really hard and working on some fun stuff that should come to a cross roads in October.  Tomorrow I leave for CO.  I don't know what to think about that yet.  My Friends in Copenhagen are doing well.  I wish I  could have gone to them this year, but it just wasn't in the cards.
The street season has been very different this year.  I haven't had as big of shows, and the work is very experimental.  In some ways it's the best year I've had, while in others I need restraint.  I have started working with a group of performers, we call ourselves the 5 of us.  They are amazing creatures, and perhaps that is accomplishment enough.

BIG GAP

Well,
it's been a while since I last Blogged.  I suppose I was busy trying to make sure I had something to blog about!  Right now I'm in Hamburg DE, and I'm one of the newest members of Pilobolus's Shadowland.  We are going to be touring for the next 7 months all over Germany and then some.  So far it's been great.  The work is incredibly challenging in ways I never it imagined it could be.  The company itself is a group of very special people.  We all have our strengths and weaknesses.  It should be exciting here we go.

Being in it

Today I realized I probably didn't get into a company I recently auditioned for.  Most of the time in the show biz world you just don't make it.  You practice falling and getting up again, but some times you actually land it.  I really felt like I landed this one, but I haven't heard anything from them.  The audition itself went so nicely, and everything felt right.  I felt right for the movement, and it inspired me to move.  It feels a bit like getting 4th place.  You are so close, you can taste it, but you still didn't make the podium.  I just have to get up and brush it off.  Or, maybe I'll send a letter.  Maybe I just need to pursue it a little longer.  I'll give it a week and then if I still don't here from them I may have too...