Setting Sunday #2
"So foul and fair a day..."
Hello and Happy Sunday. How has your week been?
I feel very lucky because I started this week by fulfilling a wish – to go and see a full Shakespeare play at The Globe Theatre in London. I went to see Macbeth, the ‘Scottish Play’, which I have taught in my other guise as a one-to-one English GCSE tutor, for the last 10 years. I’ve never got bored with it. I still learn new things from it every year I teach it. I even studied it for Drama O Level, back in the mists of time…
It's always good to see a new production of a play, every one is different. This was no exception and played fast and loose with various elements of the play, some more successfully than others. I won’t get into it here – this isn’t a review, but it was thought provoking.
Possibly the important thing about this experience was seeing the play at the Globe Theatre, being in that space, seeing how it was utilised in the performance and feeling the audience all around and the cold air coming in from above. There were also many moments of aeroplanes blasting above us, and even the very loud sound of a very close helicopter overhead, all dealt with beautifully by the actors on stage. Not sure what Shakespeare would have thought about it!
Getting off the train at Waterloo, and walking down Stamford Street in the cold, grey air of a typical October day, after all the recent heat waves and unseasonable weather, I looked around at the autumn garb of people scurrying past. It felt almost incongruous when last week I was sitting in the back garden in the hot afternoon sun. Now we are all wrapped up in hats, coats and sensible shoes. There hasn’t been a slow drift into this season, it seems to have happened in fits and starts and then - suddenly here.
Creative / writing prompt: “So foul and fair a day….”
How does that sudden change in temperature affect us physically / emotionally / psychologically? It might be an interesting thing to write about – that change from warm and expansive to cold and contracting. What kind of atmosphere does it conjure? How could it be used metaphorically?
Setting Sundays is a chance to round up the week and look forward to the new one, with the opportunity to set an intention or two, creative or otherwise. This YouTube video from Mallika Chopra is informative and entertaining – worth a watch at just under 13 minutes.
I think setting an intention can be something we do on a small, daily basis that builds into something life-changing, whether that’s creative or practical. I am working on both, as I think anything I can do practically to improve my life, will inevitably enhance my ability to be a creative practitioner which, as I said in my post last week, has been challenging this year.
My creative intention for this week is to continue to write the draft of a short story. I’ve been trying to get this done for a year, so I have set myself a deadline of the end of October – Samhain – the end of the old Celtic year. I work well with deadlines – it is a good trick for me psychologically. Intentions seem to work better when they are specific – so if I really try and get this one as exact as I can for this week is it is this:
I will sit at my desk and work on my short story for an hour every day this week, with the aim of writing another 1500 words by the end of next Saturday 28th October.
My practical intention is this:
I will stick to my bedtime of 10.30 pm each night! It sounds simple but I am so easily distracted and struggle to switch off. I end up staying up way too late, making it hard to get up the next day and that affects my narrow margin of time to write.
Let’s see if I can stick to them…
What are your intentions for this week? Please let me know in the comments below!
Finally, thank you to my lovely friend Mel for the new Setting Sundays logo.
Have a great week - see you next Sunday!
Lucy
