Thought Residencies

It's my birthday today and so I'm thinking a lot about aging. I'm thinking a lot about aging this entire summer actually. We just moved my parents into a brand new accessible house that my brothers built for them, with a little assistance from me. And it's just got me thinking about my fate as I age, as a queer man with no kids, as an artist with, you know...skeptical about my financial future, to say the least. Yeah, so just thinking about aging and thinking about what awaits. Oh god that's so depressing, sorry for the depressing thought today.

Had a great meeting with Brian and Sarah today about my new show and our upcoming workshop, which got me thinking about how lucky I am to have amazing collaborators in my life, which got me thinking about the whole reason I got into theatre in the first place. It was, what I called once, like organized sports for the geeky kid. I didn't play organized sports when I was a kid; three failed years of hockey, but we don't talk about that. And, yeah...just collaboration. And gratitude. And just being really thankful that whatever I've done in my creative career, it has garnered me the great privilege of working with some really really tremendous people, and sometimes my heart just bursts with gratitude for that.

I'm walking around the lake and there's a guy riding his bike on the walking trail and following him is his dog off leash and suddenly I'm filled with such, like, intense annoyance. And in that moment, I realize that I'm inherently in my life a really strict follower of rules. And then I start to wonder about how much of that naturally, innately, presents itself in my work, and if there's any way to break that.

And he was wearing too much cologne too.

Today Greta Thunberg departs on a two-week journey across the Atlantic in a zero emissions yacht to attend a climate conference. Today I head to my office to work on more details of sending 10-12 people on a six-month tour across Canada via car, plane, bus. Something's gotta give

So I was sitting in the park yesterday and watching some skateboarders and kind of marvelling at the inherent engagement with failure that comes with skateboarding. It's really admirable. They – usually a bunch of guys – they usually get together, and fail, try things that they know are beyond their capacity but they know they'll only get to if they repeat repeat repeat. And unlike most endeavours that practice doesn't happen in solitude, it happens in congregation, seemingly only happens in congregation with people that are also failing. At best, I guess, that's what rehearsal should be like but so often isn't. And, yeah, I just find it really admirable.

My name is Robert Chafe, and this is my thought residency, day 2.

So, I composed a rather eloquent thing detailing a conversation I had with a friend of mine about the very fuzzy line between confidence and arrogance and how I sometimes trip on that line and don't quite know how to proceed. And just as I was about to send it in, I was looking at Facebook and a friend of mine's status update simply read "get over yourself." And so I erased my thought. And replaced it with this.

So as with all things with regards to my career, I'm going back to basic principles with this thought residency and rooting it in honesty. And my first thought rooted in honesty is that this thought residency is stressing me out. Because I feel the weight and need to be poignant and smart. And I don't operate well under pressure to be anything. So that's my thought today. It's going to be an interesting month.

(Note: there is an eerily appropriate distant siren wailing in the background of this ☺)

Alright so I don't know if anybody else does this, but when I travel I really like to visit destinations that were in movies or in my favourite books. Um, for instance, I'm going to Austria in a couple of months and basically everything on my list is just something from 'The Sound of Music'. That's all I'm doing, that's the only place I'm going. It's gonna be so good.

Do you ever take your dog to the vet because he's injured? But you're scared because you think the vet is going to think that you like hurt him on purpose because you have Munschausen by Proxy? Which is a disease I learned about on the TV show 'House'? I often fear this. I don't know why. Except my dog gets injured a lot and I'm just really worried they're going to think it's me.

I just saw 25 Fringe shows at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival in the span of 5 days. That averages to 5 per day and as someone who loves theatre, that is too much theatre per day. That's at least 5 hours per day. I don't like anything that much. I saw a show once that was like 3 ½ hours. Like The Ferryman, or Jerusalem, or John. That's fine. 3 ½? Doable. 5? No. I'm out.