I don't have much to say recently. That is why I have been away from blogging.

Or exactly the other way around - I have too much to say...

As of now I am busy with making my life a better place to live. And I am also in love. With myself.

Which is good.

For the rest of it, life will will only get better.

Enjoy the autumn outside as of now.

Hugs,

I

Google Analytics anyone?

This isn't much about anything but rather to signify the fact that my Bulgarian blog all of a sudden reached 12 000 visits.
Still can't get my head around how exactly but obviously on September 15th there was this sudden rush to read stuff...
Anyone who knows how to navigate properly around Google Analytics - please, give a shout! I will be grateful to figure out how my insignificant thoughts in my mother tongue have managed to reach in the short period of less than an year 12 000 visitors...

The cynical side of me

I have recently been called ignorant.

Not that I am not. I was actually not so much surprised by the fact I was called ignorant, but much more by the fact that the person who called me ignorant realized I am ignorant. Confusing, ah?

Not so much. I all comes down to one simple thing. We meet someone, we talk to them, we build up in our minds a picture, a frame for that person, we put them in the frame and we kind of think we know what to expect from them.
In most cases this practice might work. Unfortunately there are times when this doesn't work.
This leads to the above situation when I was called ignorant.
Where the person had a frame in her mind about me, when all of a sudden I went out of the frame and all in shock she called me ignorant and inconsiderate.

I am reading a book currently and it has the definition of love in it as the ability to accept people as they are and not try to change them.
I think this fits best in my cynical profile.
Why not? I just saw in the three days I spent with a couple: friends of mine.

He loves her together with the dog and the endless number of bottles and jars of spices and the ring on her toe.
She loves him and says that on the second day she new there will never be another man in her life ever again.
He has her name tattooed on his arm, and she is truly happy when he gives her an iron for the 8th of March (a cultural discourse for the non-Eastern European readers: 8th of March is the International women day and was quite a holiday in the time of the Iron curtain when it was considered perfectly ok to give as a present to a woman a frying pan for example) .
She loves him and this has made her stronger than ever before.

Right, now, please, try to get me they way I want you to: I am cynical, ignorant, inconsiderate, but I am also loving, passionate and sensitive.
Nobody is perfect.

Once you realize people are not and will never be what you want them to be, you will start living a much happier life. Believe me.

Better start accepting people as they are, or look for the people who suite best your character today than complain how miserable you are and how you can't find the love of your life.

For the rest of it, Bulgaria is giving me the best preparation to go back to London: a second day of rain and +15 degrees...

What dreams turn into?

What dreams turn into

I came across a Who's Who book where people also had to answer the question of Who did you want to be as a child?

How many of those you think have become who they wanted to be as children? None
How many were still dreaming of the same thing? One

What's the moral of the story? The world would have been full of postmen and garbage truck drivers, as well as teachers and doctors if we have all become who we wanted to be.

I also think the world would have been a much happier place.

How now! Cries the practical side of me. We all need to live on something and also we can't have everyone as postman and garbage truck drivers!

Where and how do you find the balance of being comfortable in your living as well as being a happy person. And you never in your life again think Thanks God it is Friday?

I read a study recently that said that young Chinese people are more succesful (in this case successful meant, earning lot's of money) than their American peers because the Chinese parents are in general much more practical - get a profession, graduate from the best univerisity, earn thousands a month. Where as the American parents would rather let their children decide what makes them happy.

Now here is the key. We all have got used to living up to someonelse's standart of happiness and success. Someone else has been defining what success is for us.

Your parents think being happy is earning lot's of money, having a house and a car and two children. You think being happy is travelling, documenting the indeginious cultures of Latin America. You love your parents and you don't want to disappoint them. And you try ot live up to their standarts. You compromise your dreams and depending on how strong your personality is you either break down at some point and for the rest of your life you just collect nice pictures of Latin America or one day you pack your bags and buy a ticket to Latin America.

Both scenarios are ok.

Really.

If any those makes YOU happy. Not your parents, not someone else, but you.

So dreams turn into what we want them to turn into. You just either start living in peace with yourself or change things. Whatever way you might choose, one for sure is not the correct - moaning about things.

Enjoy the summer no matter where you are.

Hugs,
I

Good'en!

Time for updates dear stalkers:

- went to see the Seagull by the Factory theatre - this ladies and gentlemen is THE piece of theatre that made my cry. The only one after Хъшове back home a few years back.

The Factory makes this absolutely stunning type of theatre - they simply go through the process of recreating the emotions of the play. They don't get stuck in props, text, costumes, lighting. They simply really live the story they are telling. These are real emotions, real theatre as it happens.

It somehow leads to my theory about the 'anti-plastic world'. Our current world is the plastic, mass world, where very few real things are left, where individual emotions, considerations, needs are put aside for the sake of making more money and even more money.
However I have the feeling that my children will live in the anti-plastic world or at least I want them to live in an anti-plastic world, where things are real, people do what they love, not for the sake of money but for the sake of creating things and feelign happy. No, I am not talking about not making money and not living comfortably. You know what I am talking about - freedom and real things.

- I am curious where my 'wonna-be-but-it's-kinda-late' searching will take me - started from photography, architecture, went through drawing, and salsa, I am currently stuck in theatre, Shakespeare and headinf to directing. I still read about architecture and photography.

I am interested in beautiful things, structures, spaces and building spaces that encourage the proper flow of energy and where function creates form.

- wonna go home and think about the next 5 years of my life. Seriously. 28 is kinda late to take a new path, but as they say in the very smart and beauitful Москва слезам не верит: в 40 лет жизнь только начинаеться. / Moscow doesn't believe in tears: the age of 40 is just the beginning of your life.


In the mean time if you are so much into stalking me check out twitter this is where I am almost all of the time.

Things

Good morning, world!

A few recent realizations:
- words can take shapes especially when spoken with your full attention. They 'zing' and you see them all in colours and full-bodied
- people normally love what they do. The reasons though may be different. Some do things for money, other because it gives them the feeling of a fulfilment - either ways are ok. It all depends on your value system.
- it is a bad idea to keep trying to rewind the film when you have the feeling that it might get torn. This is exactly what happens after you think - one last try!

The magic of the Globe

"Pardon, gentles all, the flat unraised spirits that hath dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth so great an object.
Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France?
Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt?"

Henry V

The wooden O - this is how Shakespeare referred to the Globe theatre. A few centuries later. The wooden O stands on the Southbank in London and in the past few months has become one of my favourite and most magical places in London.

For me going up on stage has been one of the most exciting things I have done in my life. You go up there and you feel that you have this responsibility of being real and honest because people trust you to tell them a story. That is why I am so in love with the theatre - because it tells stories in an incredible way. And we all love stories. This is what sticks with us isn't it? We remember things that happen to us, or to someone else, a movie we saw. We don't remember the theory from the economics books we remember how the theory looks in practice, what happens when forces come into interaction with one another.

When one personality meets another, when two completely different pictures of the world come together. This is how the collective memory of every nation has been passed from one generation to another. From childhood role models are inhibited in our behaviour through the fairy tales we read. Through telling stories in songs, or fairy tales. What else are the holly books like the Bible, the Koran, etc if not stories about someones life.
In Morocco the custom of story tellers survives even today and can be seen on the Medina of every city every evening, not as a tourist attraction, but as a living thing.

Standing in front of an audience you immediately create this space of shared magic where for a few hours you are someone else and they believe you. And you tell them a story of love, friendship, values, faith, whatever. I come to the theatre because I forget about everything else. I go in there, I switch off for two hours and afterwards my world outside seems different, better.

What does this all have to do with the Globe?

I have been lucky enough to be volunteering as one of the stewards at the Globe. One of those people we normally don't pay too much attention when we go to any theatre and we so much don't like for the fact that the make us put away our cameras, or ask us not to talk or whatever else...
Being a steward at the Globe means not only you get to see all of the plays several times (I have seen Romeo and Juliet 7 times so far and few more are coming) but it also means being a part of a dream.

The Globe as we know it today was rebuilt only in the 90s. Before that the Globe theatre fo which Shakespeare wrote his plays burnt down in 1613 - the fire started off when a cannon was shot during the performance of Henry VII and afterwards was rebuilt in 1614 only to be demolished 30 years later by the puritans. Ever since the Globe only existed on old maps in our history books.

In 1969 a person called Sam Wanamaker shocked (by the words of the people who closely worked with him) by the fact that the only thing that signified the existance of the place for which Shakespeare wrote his plays is a plaque started campaining for rebuilding the Globe theatre.

The theatre opened again in 1997 for its first season after 353 years.

As the builders and the guides like to say at the Globe - this is our best guess of how the theatre looked like. The only picture that is known to exist nowadays of how an Elizabethan theatre looked like is a drawing by a Dutch traveller of the stage of the Swan. We know how the Globe used to look from outside only because we can find it on different maps.

I am not going to tell you the whole story of rebuilding the theatre or about the zillion creative ways volunteers were fundraising for it. You can read it all by your self either at the website of the Globe or atthis alternative place dedicated to Shakespeare.

Sam wanted the Globe not only to be a stage, but further more a plce where people from all over the world will come and discover Shakespeare. Today the Globe is a stage, an education centre, a museum.

It is a dream come true. That keeps on living every single day. I was at a Talking Theatre event tonight, which is an open Q & A with different actors. Tonight there we the actors who play Romeo (Adetomiwa Edun) and the Friar (Rawiri Paratene). You should have been there to see in there eyes how much they love being a part of the production. Eventhough they seemed tired after the performance, eventhough I have never seen Romeo smiling when they do the jig, I didn't believe till todya that they not only enjoy being Romeo and the Friar every single night, but they enjoy being Romeo and the Friar in this particular place, for which Romeo and Juliet was actually written to be performed at.

And seeing the faces of people when they come in the theatre for the first time is like me myself coming in again for the first time. It is a magically beautiful place, with oak and thatch and massive two pillars in the middle of the stage :).

And I thought tonight of Sam and how he was dreaming of the place. Unfortunately he never lived to see it open. But I am sure that with every smile and a silent sigh when Romeo kisses Juliet and a painful oh! during a stage fight he actually lives. In each of those people. Because every day his dream lives with every person going in to see a performance, with every actor walking on stage and being shocked by the audience staring in his face and being a few milimeters away from him.

This is what matters, ladies and gentlemen. Making things real. Dreaming and making dreams a reality. Never again in your life believe someone that you can't do something. Ever. Please. And above all - do not ever tell someone that are not capable of achieving things. It might make them even more ambitous, but there is a big thread they actually might believe you and thus ww all might loose something extraordinary.