middle school is daunting

 the challenge of middle school

every middle schooler wants to do their best,

though the path forward is fraught with doubt,

which way is best?

can I handle the effort 

of what needs to be done,

despite how inadequate I feel?

their social awareness comes at them with excruciating weight,

as everybody else seems to them to have it easier, more together,

whether in looks, in academic ability

in sports, in art, in singing, in just who they are,

many hope to be the best

so that comparison can help them feel of value,

finding reassurance in competition and success,

the zero-sum of feeling good

in that they are better than the other,

each fears they are the worst:

nobody else as bad at a class, 

a game, a friendship, how they look,

I often feel middle school is a trackless wood,

within which each questing soul 

can find it far easier to get lost

than to find a good way forward,

impulse pulls at them to go astray,

the way forward is often obscured,

but whenever the way opens for a young person,

whenever that young person chooses that way forward,

I cheer!

by Henry H. Walker

February 17 ‘22

group discipline and individual excellence

 

the freedom of set choreography

I am intrigued by the freedom

that a set choreography can give,

middle schoolers who fear to assert individuality on stage

fit into the given movement and given song

with focused abandon, excelling in the whole,

since they know exactly how to do the part,

and then, when it is time to improvise,

they can feel a disciplined freedom to be their selves,

how ironic that group discipline enables individual excellence,

I often push the kids to over-act their individual part,

to work to get the audience to notice their individuality

for then the whole shines brighter,

acting as if self-centered

allows the larger self to shine brighter,

because each part is bright;,

the whole can blaze

truer to its potential.

by Henry H. Walker

February 18, ‘22

we present Shrek!

 The Bubble of Shrek

a fellow director would often talk about the bubble

that holds and expands the magic of belief

when a show is coming to life,

she also warned that we should

beware the pin of losing focus,

34 middle school actors fill the bubble of Shrek,

brilliant with energy and positivity,

swelling with possibility,

full of themselves and their selves

as the community called Duloc and its surroundings,

12 middle schoolers craft the props and scenery,

4 middle schoolers stage manage so that all works,

sound, lights, costumes come together

to help the bubble to be, and to rise,

under the care of directors of acting and of singing,

all held within the wonders 

of stage-of-the-art technology and performing space,

the bubble fills,

the bubble rises,

into the house file those who have felt the bubble incipient,

and want to rise with it into the transcendence

that a good story, well-told, can work upon our souls,

a village comes to be,

something new, a musical, is born,

opening night is like a long-awaited party,

all of a sudden the curtain opens,

the show presents itself,

and the audience embraces the whole

with joy, appreciation, laughter, applause, smiles,

those in the seats recognize and embrace what’s happening,

and their empathic energy resonates within the performing

so that the bubble swells to fill the theater,

each of us: actor, audience, enabler,

pulled out of the prison of the individual

into the open courtyard where we know and love the other,

and all of us together are held in the expanding bubble,

we believe, we enjoy, we enlarge, and hold, hold,

for a time both brief and beyond time,

enchantment plays by different rules than the clock,

our collective heart lives for each bubble of belief that we can create,

people of Shrek, way to go!

the bubble thrives within your care.

by Henry H. Walker

February 11, '22

Hold door!

 the dark calls out the light

I keep hearing and acting upon Dylan Thomas’s fears:

the light is dying, and what should we do?

each of our lives can shine with impertinent flare,

a flare that challenges the darkness,

both before and after the day, the fire, 

the hope every moment wants to birth,

I work to make my own life matter,

I work to celebrate every life

that can matter, that has mattered,

I write of one we have lost to our next moments,

I seek to see who they have been,

to see the effort of their choices,

to see the effects of their choices,

I record some of those I know,

some of those I have known,

on the video that Zoom allows, and enables,

and I hope the website I maintain with such sharings

is good enough for people to beat a path to its shared door,

as a species, I fear for us,

for the Dark calls, and the Light may not hold.

by Henry H. Walker

February 3 ‘22