[chris] onward ho

Half a day's passed since I got word that I was still in the running here at the talent quest and I've scarcely had time to process it. Of course, upon receiving Izzy's call I did a little jig around my hotel room (in spite of the $2/minute my cell provider was soaking me for at the time), but within 15 minutes I had to run back to the theater where the rest of my grueling thirteen hour day awaited me. I know, I know, you're thinking "How hard can a puppet-wiggling trip to Buenos Aires be?", but my numerous bruises and utter exhaustion will testify to the madness: 8500 lbs. of water, tons of rigging, hundreds of puppets, a hundred-plus lights (well shielded and GFCI'ed, thank heavens, as we five puppeteers splash a hundred gallons a night all over them), endless hours of rehearsal/tech in an unheated building soaked head to toe in ice-cold water (it's winter here, remember), swinging in harnesses through the darkness, hands swinging metal rods and sharp abstract plastic objects. The show itself is a crazy-enough, intensely frenzied hour-long aerobic workout, but these days of prep for opening day (tonight) have been as bad as the worst days I ever spent on any construction job. No, honestly, this week has been tougher than any construction job I've ever done. Maybe, though, I'm just getting older. I have been doing this show for ten years now, and was probably a lot more spry when I was 26.

Luckily the schedule will mellow out in the next few weeks, allowing me ample time to get to work on Round Four. I've got all sorts of ideas for the challenge, but am going to have to really work hard to shape them into a slick radio show. It's not so much the ideas themselves that's got me stressed as it is some of the immediately pressing peripheral issues: figuring out what gear I need (and can afford) to be able to record in the field, finding a resource for books in English, finding the power cord for my external hard drive (I did pack it, didn't I?), and negotiating the mundanities of finding fresh vegetables in the beef-eating capitol of the world, a place to do my laundry, and learning Spanish -- difficult porteño Spanish to boot, which involves a lot of squishy enunciation, mumbly truncated colloquialisms and, most bizzarely, a type of syllable-reversing wordplay known as lunfardo, which is at times not unlike cockney rhyming slang (eg, "tango" becomes "gotan").

Many, many a challenge awaits me in these next weeks, but still the dominant feelings I have are awe, excitement and gratitude. The contest judges and voters have spotted a glimmer of promise amid my many awkward tyro stumblings, and I am humbled that they have such faith in me. And to my fellow contestants, both current and fallen, I am so grateful for your warmth and friendship. Thank you, thank you, thank you all.

And now, having finally gotten to the place in this competition where I can make some art however I dang well please, where I can pull from my strengths rather than grimacingly bare my weaknesses, I'm just fiendishly excited to pour every last drop of creative energy into my next submission. I will, good friends of radio-land, give it all I've got.

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