Through Infrared Goggles

Note: monster grammar has been preserved for authenticity
Translated from Monst'rish by J. Robideau

Dear All,

"Raaarrrrghhhh!" That's "Grammercy" for follow this blog. And grammercy, Jennifer for tell my story, and grammercy too for translate my squealing into the words now on screen. Some of you know me as "Jealousy Monster," the one Emilia warn Desdemona of in Act 3, scene 4. But truth, I am not dangerous as jealousy. It is simple: I have a face that is always surprise, excite, and horror.


I enjoys reading sonnets...


making surprise on friends...


and adventures!!!

Here's what happed week 5 of Shakespearience's tour of Othello! Wish you here! See you soon!

Love,

Infrared Bijounee

Mama?

I hunger! But I am a vegetarian's.
xoxo PBJ

Q: what is behind tortilla?
A: ME!!!!!

Oh, nohs!

Hello Friend.
Sneek-a-boo.

aiyeee, "inhuman dog!"
Hahahah
lols

Cheeeeeeeep!

glump.
farewells.

Othello Week 5 Part 2

Dear Idaho,

I thought I was fickle, but you change your face more times than the moon. It was 60 degrees when we left Boise; last week up north, the temperature was warmer; this week, out EAST you snowed on us. Twin Falls and Several Springs were warm enough to swim, but by the time we hit Declo, the winds rocked the Penske so hard we thought we might fly home; however, you had other plans for us. You swallowed our van keys and held us captive in Burley Friday night. What danger did you protect us from? What fate did you deflect? What history did you avoid? Thank you for your constant surprises!

Love,

Infrared and the cast of Othello**

See my adventure in the next blog, "Through Infrared Goggles."
**Translation by J. Robideau. Grammar has been altered for clarity unless otherwise noted.

Othello Week 5 Part 1

Monday NIGHT show in
Dietrich, Idaho

The students demand we autograph their clothes

Do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth as you cross the room?

Dietrich's principal and students read a scene from Othello in their workshop.

David and gang @ Declo High School
Declo, Idaho

Othello Week 4 Part 2

Dear Students,

Forgive me for not capturing each and every one of you! My camera is human and sometimes fails. Actually it is not human. "Tis a monster. Begot upon itself, born on itself..." and her name is Infrared...

Shakespearience loves you all. You are the reason we do this. You are what makes our show wonderful, exciting, and fresh. You make us exist. Thank you for your spirit and support! We keep soldiering on through the state, but you are the real soldiers!

-Infrared B. and cast of Othello

Infrared Bijounee Goes North!

Bonners Ferry High!

The Machine

Workshop with Advanced Drama Class

St Patty's Day with
The McCall Siberian Tigers!!!

Othello Week 4 Part 1

Soldiers of the Road

Week 4 takes us...

NORTH!

Where Idaho becomes Pacific Northwest

Lines: Why do we follow them? Do they dictate reality? REAL definition? I am straddling time and place--relishing the nonsense of it all. In my mind I am Pacific, Mountain, and Now-here. I am American, Canadian, and Earth. There is no difference. Nuance is ever happening--the lines are but one defined mark on the infinite spectrum of change. Everything is changing, moving, dying, blooming...giving way into each other. Here is a record of our defiance of divisions and definitions--somewhere out northwest...somewhere nowhere...

7 hours 55 mins +

My Own Private Idaho?

ooh la la Palouse!
My new favorite word


Sandpoint!


Canada d- 74 miles!

stranded on the tracks

Almost Andean

Love

Property was thus appalled,
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was called.

Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together,
To themselves yet either neither,
Simple were so well compounded,

That it cried, How true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none,
If what parts can so remain.

-Shakespeare

Othello Week 3 Part 2

What is love without expression?
What is art...

I have been an adult for sometime now. I often forget the freedom that comes with being a "grownup," though I still maintain that I will never grow-up. Wordsworth laments the innocence we lose when we become adults. What is lost then and what is gained with age? There is likewise much lost in being young--youth is not immortality. Play is immortality. This is why I will never "grow up" or rather why I will always "play."

We may lose part of our innocence in growing up, but being an adult allows us certain freedoms we don't have as children (such playing and dis-playing our affections). We become free of what the whining schoolboy dreads. And now to imagine rules such as NO PDA... but I must express myself! I must play! Ah, to live now is to have our cake and eat it too. Wee can choose to gorge on innocence and freedom. We play. We love. We sing.

Each week we perform roughly 3 shows a day. We practice growing-down like we eat meals. This also means we load our steel/corrugated polycarbonate bulletproof greenhouse set in and out of the Penske roughly 15-20 times, articulate and punctuate roughly 100 plosive curses from our diaphragms, and endure roughly 36 collective deaths--per week.

In addition to this physical labour of love, we have the privilege of teaching workshops. We take the highschoolers through the process of understanding what we minstrels do for a living. I am grateful to have the health and courage to move my limbs, stretch my lungs and let the words of William Shakespeare fly through me. Teaching our workshops reminds me this.

Working with the children is the best part of this job. I forget sometimes what it was like before I loved William. It gives me joy to imagine we might be a reason these youths fall in love too. I am charmed. Honored. Silly. Fourteen again.

Cascade, Idaho

"Attention Students--before you head to the milk chugging contest, those of you who drove a farm vehicle to school today, please proceed to your tractors for photographs."

Buhl High, Buhl, ID

Week 3 done! After Wednesday's crazy 3 show 2 workshop day, we earn our weekend. Next week we take to the road again--northern Idaho, where we will approach Canada and become minstrels again, guitars in hand, poles in Penske.

The Vic Chesnutt obsession continues. Limited expression has always fascinated me. Lavinia, Jean-Dominique Bauby, Jacqueline du Pre...

Dakotah surprises me with a blue guitar. I try out different positions to arrange my fingers to make the sounds I want. Or don't know I want. I am going to write a song, a woeful ballad, a joyful, childish explosion of musical PDA.

The Next Step

Canto XII from The Heights of Macchu Picchu

Arise to birth with me, my brother.
Give me your hand out of the depths
sown by your sorrows.
You will not return from these stone fastnesses.
You will not emerge from subterranean time.
Your rasping voice will not come back,
nor your pierced eyes rise from their sockets.

Look at me from the depths of the earth,
tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd,
groom of totemic guanacos,
mason high on your treacherous scaffolding,
iceman of Andean tears,
jeweler with crushed fingers,
farmer anxious among his seedlings,
potter wasted among his clays--
bring to the cup of this new life
your ancient buried sorrows.
Show me your blood and your furrow;
say to me: here I was scourged
because a gem was dull or because the earth
failed to give up in time its tithe of corn or stone.
Point out to me the rock on which you stumbled,
the wood they used to crucify your body.
Strike the old flints
to kindle ancient lamps, light up the whips
glued to your wounds throughout the centuries
and light the axes gleaming with your blood.

I come to speak for your dead mouths.

Throughout the earth
let dead lips congregate,
out of the depths spin this long night to me
as if I rode at anchor here with you.

And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,
and link by link, and step by step;
sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,
thrust them into my breast, into my hands,
like a torrent of sunbursts,
an Amazon of buried jaguars,
and leave me cry: hours, days and years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.

And give me silence, give me water, hope.

Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.

Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.

Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.

Speak through my speech, and through my blood.

Pablo Neruda

Othello Week 3 Part 1

Gluttony

If food be the food of love, play on

Q: What do Minstrels Eat?
A: Everything (except for the Vegetarian)

At first I was upset that I forgot my camera during week 2 of the tour. Othello traveled outside of Boise for the first time: Twin Falls, Idaho City, Buhl... I even used my laptop to try and capture the moment (see above), but after a struggle, I realized, as I always do...

"this is not important. It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God, it is great to be alive! Thank you. Thank you."
- Alexander Supertramp

Thus, a written account of the food-crimes that ensued:

• Breakfast at Calamity Janes in Idaho City: Omlette filled with "Sobbing Potatoes", avocado, salsa, and cheese
  
• Pies the size of a tractor wheel --at Trudy's
  
• Nine Beans and a Burrito = True Love-- and Lard, I am sure of it.

Give me excess of it

• Riverboat cafe: where meat lovers thrive and vegetarians eat ... fries.
  

Out of town for the first time, I packed vegetarian rations galore: 2 PBJ's, a hummus-agucate sanduche, 2 luna bars, and 3 apples. I ate EVERYTHING in 3 days plus continental breakfasts, which I am sure were the culprits that made me sick. Note to self: No matter how cool a hotel waffle iron is, or how tempting Vickie the Hampton Inn breakfast mistress makes it-- her mom threw a waffle iron into their backyard during a domestic fight that set them at odds for years and thus is why she protested the waffle iron at the breakfast station when it first arrived, but Hapmton won the argument--do not partake. Note to self part 2: also don't coat said waffle iron's Kirkland waffle in Kirkland peanut butter and Kirkland HFC ("maple") syrup...

that surfeiting the appetite may sicken and so die

Beware of gluttony

1781: It is the greene-ey'd Monster, which doth mocke
1782: The meate it feeds on.

How can I not feel gluttonous looking back on this food-joy? I feel it still-- even now as I sit in a cafe in Boise as I reflect on my road trip, the story of Chris McCandless fresh in my skull.

I am no vagabond.

What is it like to be desperately hungry? To starve? To have poor hands? In some ways, my HANDS are not poor enough to SEE just how rich I am.

Ros.
A Traueller: by my faith you haue great rea-son
1937: to be sad: I feare you haue sold your owne Lands,
1938: to see other mens; then to haue seene much, and to haue
1939: nothing, is to haue rich eyes and poore hands.

I still don't know what is next for me. Is that poor enough? I know I am going to Machu Picchu--and even that, I have already got a tour booked. I know I will be fed and sheltered each night for the four days it takes to follow the Inca Trail. After that--for the summer, I have no home--no place which to return--no plans. NO money. Perhaps this is insecurity enough. Perhaps I am a vagabond of a different variety.

OR just a fool...

Coffee: Blood of Boise and Me

How to live happily
now
without my sweet, strong... Americano?


Idaho: private, hip, potato,
East of Spokane
Pacific Northwest --
at least up north near the Canadian border.
I'm gonna dip my toe in it
at Bonner's Ferry
just south of Creston
break the pot that separates
liquid, solid, and bliss.

Is't possible?
Haply?
Pish!

O Canada!
Come to my lips and take my blood for sleep
Espresso and Melatonin
in a cup for here, please.
I'll make a bed down south,
when our mouths meet--
sweet coffee breath,
good morning again!

A cure for the quake.
Machu Picchu
Climb me to you
Peru-Press me
William, Shake me
bowl of soul
1.75
the mountain before me,
before
May, a dream
upstaged by a stage of sleep
to live and love,
a happy interim

parting our fellowship,
perchance to (live our) dream
that when we see return of love
more blessed May be the view
of cloud-forests in my coffee