Decide

Think I'll at least prepare for the "pre-auditions" in February. Don't know if I should try to do a classical piece, or just two contrasting contemporary. The dilemma being that the common practice seems to be that if you perform two pieces, one is contemporary, one is classical, but I don't have classical training, and am definitely not doing Shakespeare. Too bad that class got cancelled over the summer. From the comments on the forum, don't think I should sing either...so that leaves two monologues. The pre-auditions give you feedback on what's working, what is not, and give you the green light (or not) for the general auditions. If you don't get in, you can try again the next year. I could use the feedback regardless, not really expecting to the get the green light. The monologue I just did is sorta' a black comedy, not sure if I should use it or not, mostly because I'm not sure what to contrast it with.

I was late meeting with classmates after work, took longer to get there than I thought, the meeting place was moved further north. Got one session in and someone gave me a ride to choir practice, which was great, because the sky started to dump rain again, and it was a much further walk than I was thinking. We are working on Christmas music, happily we are doing some new music, at least new to me. Unfortunately, the more difficult one is in Swedish, I have a hard time with Swedish...I don't know how to phonetically spell it out. I mostly have the Finnish down now. We are also singing in Latin.

Still feeling pretty blank. Still making myself write. Feeling completely overwhelmed with scheduling, with everything going on in my life, and in the world, I might add. And all the things I have to do, like buy cleaning supplies for the house, so I can deduct it from my rent so I can get my rent paid on time. And I haven't had time to do it. Maybe before work tomorrow? And cook...and get that other bill paid that I forgot about last month. And I have to get 3-4 more meetings scheduled for class before Sunday, and I'm working Friday night...at least there will be food there. Need to be creative with food, got $20 until the tenth after all the bills are paid. My shoes have all fallen apart, too. Maybe I can do a medical reimbursement...I'm not feeling sorry for myself, I'm just completely overwhelmed with everything. Yeah, I chose to go to school, so I'll have to live with it. I won't get rich doing art, but it keeps me alive. It fills back in all the places that were empty and burnt out, in a way that other things don't, and so that's worth it, for the hope and the joy of it...but there's the other reality of money and I'm slamming into that (I knew I would). Just have to get through it somehow. I have to admit, I do hate being poor.

Sunday

Computer got hijacked last night, including by some anti-virus software that wants me to buy it, don't know how it got on my computer, I've never used it. Anyway, no links to anything in my posts for a while. It's Antivirus Security Pro, and it's a scam. I'll need to take my computer to someone to have them show me how to take it off.

It's pouring again. Supposed to get windy. I don't know if my shoes ever dried out from yesterday.

Bummed a ride home from class, will try not to make a habit of it, though he does live near me. Only have one meeting scheduled so far this week, we need to make four or five. Chair work is expanding to be statements. And it's still strange to stare into someone's eyes for thirty minus a pop, someone I met a week ago. It feels like immediate intimacy. It's funny, I was supposed to meet someone this afternoon, and they weren't there (crossed wires again) but I saw someone else and we did the exercise. It felt like some weird dating ritual, very public (we were in a coffee shop.) Been feeling like that a lot lately, went to this underattended arts event, and I was joking with my sister that it felt like speed-dating, I felt like I should meet everyone. Kinda' awkward.

It rained so hard during class that the ceiling started to leak. I glanced out the window at one point and was distracted by all these large, airborne, white items flying past. Not sure what they were, couldn't get up to go look, we were debriefing. I really should at least wash my face, since I put it on the floor at one point tonight, trying to decide if I should eat or shower. I've been wanting to eat this squash all day, but it's gonna take more time to prepare than I have right now, still, I'm kinda' obsessing over it. Maybe I need more beta-carotene in my diet. 'Night.

Wet

Went through the wash several times today, at least my shoes are cleaner, and my rain jacket is still keeping out rain. It just started up again, I can hear it hitting my window.

Worked a catering event this morning at 7 am, and then watched the Wim Wenders' documentary Pina which was great. She (Pina Bausch) was a German dancer/choreographer, and it's interesting to see it now as I can see her influence in most of the performance art/dance I've seen in the past year. There's a lot of love present in her work, and that might be the result of the company being together for so long, or it might just be her. My favorite work was Café Müller which involved chairs and the dancers dancing blindly, but just the way they move and connect is beautiful in general.

After that, I went to MOHAI http://www.mohai.org/ for free museum day, which is my new favorite museum. It's a fairly "eyes wide open" look at the history of  this city, warts and all, and it makes me fall in love with Seattle all over again. It's a relatively new (and much larger) space for the museum, and it's so well-curated. And it's fun. (And now I have the Seattle fire song stuck in my head.) It was also pleasantly crowded, aided no doubt, by the miserably wet weather (windy and over an inch of rain already today) and the free passes. I left during what I thought was a lull in the rain, but as soon as I'd walked about 50 yards, it started up again. Was going to go to another museum, but time was running short, so I caught the bus home.

The bus ride was long, delayed, crowded, on the wrong route and people were pretty stoic. I pulled out (a different) art mag and dropped peas on the seat then onto the floor. This packet of peas (seeds) broke open in my bag a while ago (um, when it was still planting season...um, yikes) and I haven't emptied them out yet. I explained that to the very serious man across from me, and in my embarrassment, made him laugh. Clown-ish.

Want to go to a puppet show tonight, but might skip it: there are two college football games in town tonight, one now, and one at 7 pm south of downtown, and that combined with the rain, the new bus schedules/route drivers, and I think it's gonna be a mess trying to get anywhere. There's one next weekend as well, but I think I'm busy all next week. Am actually free tonight. I want to see more puppetry, I've always kinda' liked it. I guess it'll depend on if I can get there avoiding the stadium traffic.

Think we are about to lose power, lights are flickering. Oh, no. Just the last of my over-priced light bulbs giving up the ghost. Don't know where to get more either. Thankfully, this IKEA lamp bulb has lasted forever, and is still working. Here's a silly picture of ducks resting on one foot. Maybe I'll stay in and do laundry.

Break in the rain/L Herlevi 2013

Happy Friday

Four-leaf clover/L. Herlevi 2013

Friday and the start of a really wet week

Although there is currently a break in the rain and a lightening in the sky. I've now been on a Eurythmics kick all week, happily there is a youtube mix, which I am currently listening to. Here's a link to the lion story (based on Aesop's Fables) http://www.mikelockett.com/stories.php?action=view&id=65

Met with my second person for chair exercises, it went better, mostly I mean that we mostly did only that for the half hour. I wanted to ask her a million questions, but only asked a couple: hopefully there will be time. I think my guard must come down, even if I don't always feel it. It's so unusual to continually gaze into someone else's eyes.

On the way home, read the local arts mag, seeing all the things that are interesting, knowing I can maybe do one or two, and wondering sometimes if it's better to know or not know everything that is going on. Feels like everyone is doing something cooler than me, but that's my own insecurities talking. People have lives, jobs, limited energy, time, money. We all do what we can. What resources allow for. My life is good enough.

Still staring at perfectionism

Had an entertaining enlightenment about character actors/directors/shows I should take a look at from a dancer and a linguist, both well-versed in theatre. I have no idea how that conversation started.

Back to the book, if someone has something to teach, I'm willing to be a student and learn from them. I have a low threshold for bs, and so I tend not to follow anyone blindly, or buy into the hype (I'm sure it may have happened for moments, but not for long...an advantage of having a brain like a darting squirrel.) I'm not looking for a "guru", whether that be for art or religion or diet or whatever. If the teacher knows their shit, I'll stay and learn longer. There's always something to learn, but I'll probably never be a complete devotee, I think it's dangerous. It gives someone else too much power over you and not enough space to think for yourself.  (I do, at times, rebel over silly things, but so be it. And I'm hypocritically self-righteous over other people's self-righteousness, what can you do? In the end, it is okay to be the deeply flawed, self-righteous, caring, lost, forgiving and grudge-holding, amazing and awful, laughable and cringe-worthy, inconsistent, stubborn, mind-changing, frightened and courageous, fearful, angry, and loving humans that we are: am learning to deal with that. I'm learning to live with the perfection in the imperfection. The other choice is to be paralyzed into inaction all the time because I'll never be good enough. Yes, that again. My doctor brought it up, said she thought clown woulda' been good for me, for the perfectionist thing, and it was. She's not a shrink, we just talk about random stuff. Oh, she's the same one that gave me the joke.)

I need to get better at closing myself off after doing theatre stuff, especially this. When I walked to the bus after class, everyone I passed either checked me out or spoke to me. And I met my classmate today during lunch to do the exercises, and then after work I stayed in the area because it's closer to choir practice than going home first, and I got hit on by the person at the next table. I think that's what happened after the massage last summer as well. Those aren't always bad things, but I'm way too open; too much of a magnet. Maybe I should wear headphones (and not actually turn them on-need to be aware of surroundings.) With this work, you strip all the defenses away, and those need to get put back up when the work is over. It's needed in the rehearsal space, and it's safe there, but not outside. George always did some sorta' ritual with us at the end of class, because clown work is so vulnerable. And walking out with lowered defenses was never an issue. I should find one for this.

It's so quiet out

And it's almost 7 am. I'm not actually angry, just annoyed. There are things worth getting angry over, this isn't one of them. I also don't blame anyone else for all the baggage I'm dragging around that colors the things I encountered. Am amused that I have so much distaste for this book though. And am hoping that the missed meeting with my classmate is only crossed wires and the time can be made up: we need to get the hours in. Gotta get to work now.

As I was leaving, a bird began to sing. Perhaps it is only the robins that sing so early, before the sun is even beginning to consider rising, in the inky dark, full of stars. The other birds, wait for light to brighten the day first. It was crossed wires. I had a message at work this morning. Try again.

I woke up at four am, never did fall back asleep. Must've had caffeine in the afternoon, more in the tea than I thought. Trying to fight off the daytime sleepiness. Need to get back on a good sleep/wake cycle.

I need to save up and get a hair cut and get head shots done. There was an audition call, that I woulda' liked to have done, but you need a head shot. I could ask a friend to do one just for this, I suppose.

Waiting

No birds outside my window this morning, however, a starling was singing it's heart out on the telephone pole above my bus stop: as with snow, I'll take what I can get, and where. (I like starlings, they sing with such abandon, throwing their entire beings into it, as if that's why they were here.)

Later, when dusk had settled in, the gray clouds were finally pushed to the edges of the horizon, leaving the glowing sky a wide open canopy. Waited for an hour and a half for my classmate to show to work on the chair exercises. No show. No answer to email. No call. Shit. We have to have three in by Sunday. I hope my other two show up. Maybe he thought it was tomorrow. Tried to work my way through the book. It bores the crap out of me. I can read it in small, small bits. I get what it's trying to say and I get why we are reading it, but it goes off on this lofty, esoteric crap about nothingness (which I get, I do)...it just gets a little pompous. Granted, I was already annoyed at being stood up, and using more than I should of my budget to sit there and wait, so that probably added to my distaste of the book. Luckily, it's short. The technical stuff interests me, the trying to explain it doesn't, that part where he's trying to intellectualize something he's being told not to think so hard about. The breath description, his failure at it, the tension in his body, his failure at progression in learning, all interesting.

I just read someone saying that trying to learn acting by reading a book, or learning golf by reading a book isn't the same as physically doing the thing: putting it in muscle memory. I intellectualize too much, out of laziness sometimes; too much effort to do the work. I guess I'm finally ready to get to work already; I don't want to read about his process, I want to hold the bow myself and learn to shoot it.

On the bright side, got the bathroom cleaned while I waited for my computer to boot up to write this. Think I'll go write, or try to figure out my schedule for the next month. Kinda' busy.

I thought a little more about it. Part of my annoyance stems from being kept as an observer, separated from the action by a window. He's only describing his experience, not really opening that up to anyone else. (And in general, I'm pretty sick of that stance.) I'm glad he found enlightenment if he did, but that's open to everyone, if they want it (and even a few that didn't want it, received it anyway) it's not a special "in" club. Being excluded by default is part of that stone in my shoe, not gonna kill me, but it pisses me off. Bringing a lot of my own baggage into that book, and moving in with it. Ha. And that little dagger twists just a bit more.

Hm. Didn't realize fruit flies lived this long.

Day 2

Or I could make a bunch of characters up that speak at different pitches until I find a pitch I like that is closer to my natural resonance. We have so much wrapped up in the identities we've created.

We finally got to see pictures from the rehearsal. I look a bit crazy in most of mine, my eyes are really wide open. There are a lot of a couple of the scenes and not much of the rest of us. (And admittedly, in the scene with the most of photos, they look great.)  Only one of the prologue/epilogue.

The only Meisner exercise I had heard of before is the "chair" exercise. We started that tonight. Doing it for a half hour is going to be a struggle, though I suspect that's part of the point, to break through that (like meditation.) I think the other part is to really listen to your partner and respond instinctively, letting go of: 1) hiding behaviors (that term did come from theatre); 2) ego; and 3) the intellect having control. It's not the intellect that gives the first thoughts or responds in the moment. Stripping the house down to the studs. And then rebuilding it.

I really am a newbie, about half the class seems to be actively working on shows now. Haven't decided if I will try for the winter cattle call auditions or not. I might, it would be a good learning experience. I know very little about auditioning, and I don't have headshots. But that's four months away. Time does go by quickly, I'll have to start working on monologues and reading now. Should be always doing that anyway.

Oh, I was going to comment that there is an absurdity to repeating the same word or two words over and over and over again: they lose all meaning and start to sound really strange coming out of your mouth. My first partner and I kept busting up laughing, which was fine, because it was a real reaction in the moment. And then she did the same word on the next round which made it even funnier. But we stayed connected and repeating the word even when we were laughing through the whole thing. I'm sure all emotions come up with this.

'Night.

All the ibuprofen has made my stomach hurt. Really hurt. I probably need to stop:(

Tired

Been in need of a nap since 9 am. Going to finally take one now; missed choir rehearsal, but got most of my reading done this afternoon.

My doctor, who only gets to say this to me because she's been my doctor for a while and is also a singer, said that I need to start speaking at a higher pitch. She's right of course. How do I begin to do that? I don't want to do it, though it would be better for my throat. In a voice class I took last autumn, my natural resonance was at a higher pitch than how I regularly speak. I know I lowered my pitch in my late teens or early twenties because I wanted to be taken more seriously. I'm not a large person, and I'm female and I was living in a very male-dominated universe, and had always been mocked for looking young and being "girly," (ironically, mostly by girls.) So, there is a lot wrapped up in it. The thing is though, my natural singing pitch is "C" and above (on the treble clef.) It actually is pretty uncomfortable to sing alto. I think my speaking voice is around an "F" or a "G." That's not particularly uncomfortable, but not my natural tone. It would be easier to move away and change it, everyone I know is used to this pitch. I'll have to do it gradually. She suggested I practice the pitch change through singing the words. Maybe I could make my clown speak there until I get used to it? I probably need to go see someone, a speech therapist or a vocal coach. I'm really self-conscious about it. It's physically healthier in the long run, and probably emotionally healthier as well, but emotionally and physically difficult to change.