Teyr'loch Delter Pach: The Final Stretch

We are 2 full scenes away from reaching the end of Teyr'loch Delter Pach's rough draft. Like most of the latter half of the performance, I've had a vague sense of how the scenes would transpire, but other than a few vivid images in my head, I hadn't the slightest idea how to connect the remaining points.

Unlike Pihm's readings and before, the latter half explores deeper abstractions, as Cael leans into one revelation after the other. The progression from the concrete events of the first half to the abstract depictions of the present moment in the latter unfolds naturally within the context of the performance, but writing it has been a doozy, especially puzzling out how to evoke Jakhturim's reading of Cael's past, present, and future without stating each card and their meanings outright like Pihm had for her section, which was what I had originally planned.

However, given the way in which events aligned, having Jakhturim speak would have been jarring and would have thrown off the delicate balance that already exists between the text and the music.

So, I had to find an alternative means of showing Cael's 2nd reading, which I did by weaving the imagery of each card into the scene itself, which I did to an extent with Pihm as well. I simply ommitted the speaking portion.

To illustrate, here's a snippet of the scene where Pihm describes the meaning of the card that represents Cael's past, "The 4 of Cups":

• The dome parts.

• The table lies on its side, the cloth disheveled, the tea set nowhere to be seen. I sit where it used to be, my knees bent loosely, my ankles crossed. My arms drape limply over my knees. Dangling from my fingertips is a vial, inside of which sloshes a liquid.

• The shadows depict us inside a wrecked home. Splashes on the floor nearby could be either blood or something else; it’s difficult to tell.

• No shadows touch me but they do form three chalices between the roped wedges in front of me. I heed only the vial.

• Pihm: For your past we have the 4 of Cups.

• I lumber to my feet.

• Hushed whispers echo a name from various points around the room.

• Me, whispered echoes: Efial. Efial. Efial. You are Efial. Cael is gone. They were worthless. No one needs Cael. You are Efial. (Efial, Efial) You are Nightmare. Be his Nightmare.

• I pop the cork, tip my head back, and down the contents, a viscous red liquid.

• Pihm: It represents apathy.

• Immediately the voices hush. The shadows wither and dissolve to their natural state.

• My arm falls to my side, my gaze locked on a fixed point while I open my mind to the Poultice of Fate. The vial falls from my hand to clatter against the floor.

And here's a snippet of one of the scenes that represents Jakhturim's reading of Cael's present, "The Emperor":

• We are Cael. We are Nim. We are shadow, and we mould to all touched by light. Cael is our body, and our body is another appendage we can control through our shadow.

• Yet there’s more to it than just a collective consciousness.

• We stand, and as we stand, we feel the scattering of beads across our skin like granules of sand, collecting into a mantel of shadow draped around our shoulders. We touch not just the seen but the unseen as well. Everything casts a shadow, from the largest statue to the tiniest speck of dust, and every breath, every twitch of movement releases a cascade of ripples through the unseen.

• Like all shadows, these floating beads can be connected, shaped by a skilled enough sculptor. We’ve just never been able to shape them ourselves.

• That’s what the conductor is for.

• ‘Cael’ is the one who gives us form through their sweeping gestures, and we play, unbound by our mirror light, spinning and corkscrewing up into twisted stalagmites, melting, bursting out into petals of crystalline spider lilies that splash back into the floor, then run up between motes of dust like paint running along a string, becoming an inverse star field of nonsensical constellations through rods and joints that spin on singular axes, snapping into alternate formations on the fly.

• We return the favor unto ‘Cael’, expanding upon the mantel to dress our body in the long raiments befitting a ruler of Night. We flow like sheer fabric without impeding their movements, wispy yet elegant. As a finishing touch, we weave a crown atop their head made of shadowed flowers.

Eventually they pass on either the crown or the mantel to their professor and the other to their father, both of whom represent "The Emperor" in their own ways. It helps that I set up using the shadows symbolically within Pihm's reading so that ommitting a direct explanation of what the later cards mean doesn't come out of left field.

I'm not sure yet as to how I'll represent the "Reversed Queen of Pentacles," though I do have a faint idea forming in the back of my mind of some of the imagery. Once that scene is finished, I'll have only the denouement left, and then the rough draft will be completed, leaving editing and music as the final touches. I hesitate to give an estimate on when I believe I'll be 100% finished, but I will say, between polishing and practicing, I suspect it'll be before September.

In the future, when I work on a prolonged project such as Teyr'loch Delter Pach, I might dedicate each week of blogs solely to the project, no matter how long or short, and then place the rest in my "Other Notable Accomplishments" section, that way it's easier to follow the timeline of the project's start to finish without random other accomplishments interrupting the process. The only wrinkle in that idea I foresee is if I take a few weeks off of said future project to complete other tasks, similar to how I had for this performance. I'll have to think on it.

Other Notable Accomplishments:

• C25K Week 4 Day 2

• Pull-ups were rough this week, as were some of the other exercises in my Built With Science routine. Still maintained or made a little bit of progress with increasing reps, but it definitely paled in comparison to the previous week. Will probably be deloading within the next couple weeks to accommodate the upcoming drop in energy levels.

Questions for Contemplation & Discussion:

• Do you prefer I do as I have been and write about whatever is on my mind from week to week or focus my blogs on the start-to-finish of my highest priority project and delegating the rest to "Other Notable Accomplishments" regardless of how many months it takes?

  • In some ways, I'm still figuring what my "niche" is.

• When the finish line finally draws near, do you feel reinvigorated to complete your project, or is that when you balk and start to doubt yourself?

  • I've experienced both sides. The latter I usually feel whenever there's still yet a lot to go back and fix, change, rewrite, cut, etc...

This Week's Obligatory Cat Pic: Mura

"Aren't I the most photogenic, Mama?" :b