Animals

It's 12:30 on a school night. I got home less than an hour ago. My stomach is incredibly unsettled so sleep eludes me for a bit. This is the final week of Halloween Adventure. I don't think I'm going to survive. I've become an essential member of the team, but I'm falling apart. Work is mindless and it's an act I have perfected at a rapid pace - the face of retail, willing to be treated less than human for 8 glorious dollars an hour. The mindlessness is what soothes me, along with the separation from theatre overload. But now I have theatre overload and Halloween overload, and nowhere to escape either, so both have to suffer. And I'm not okay with that.

Happy Halloween. I'm cracking into pieces and trying to balance to keep them together.

I guess I wanted this, though. To have to run and fly and fall with no one to catch me and only me to answer for what I live through. That's the real world, and even though I'm graduating in a matter of months, I still feel like I can't do anything on my own.

At least the weather is pretty.

Danger Danger

A few things.

Egon Schiele. New artistic obsession. Also GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM. I think I have found the equivalent vibration to my art-soul, and it is very dark and twisty and beloved to me.

Somehow I'm incredibly behind in all of my schoolwork, even as I struggle to keep up. Entire projects have caught me blindsided, grades hover tremulously on a knife edge, my perfectionist self is wrestling with what must be sacrificed for the overall good, what classes do I need to skip to catch up, how will I keep up, then? I'm running into the ground but I have no choice but to keep running.

Work is 11 days away from reaching it's end. Within those eleven days, if I don't completely snap or die, it will be a miracle. Even with the absurd hours (hello, 12 hour shift) the money is barely enough to keep me fed and clean and bills paid. I gotta just hang on.

A song. Indelibly.

Maybe The Fall

One of those days. I couldn't make myself stand, so I stayed here. Getting things done. Trying to piece my brain together and steady the world so I can keep going. It's been a rough week. But I'll get through. I always do.

Breathing. One two three. Breathing. Four five six. Breathing.

Day Off

Happy Columbus Day!*

*Happy Celebration of the Raping and Pillaging and Syphilis Spreading to an Already Populated Hemisphere with a Rich and Vibrant Culture!

I get the day off though, so I shouldn't bitch too much. First full day off in over a week. Between studio and work, it's going to put me in a straightjacket before too long, but I'm pretty happy, in spite of my crazy.

My allergies are either horrifically awful or they have progressed into a slight cold, since my voice vanished completely yesterday and I sounded like Fran Drescher with laryngitis at work. Not appealing to customers when they think I'm going to infect them with the black plague or something. Stuffy nose and a creeping cough, too. :( So today I'm going to go on vocal rest for as long as I possibly can. Tea, honey, Ricola and rest is priority number one for today. I have a shitton of homework to do also, but at least none of it requires speaking.

Halloween costume ideas - I have one idea to do at work with the girls, and one for my studio friends. A green witch to match the witches of Leg Avenue, but then I also want to do post-apocalyptic Disney Princesses. A tattered, weaponized and knife wielding Belle, with beast pelt cloak and the rose in her hair.

I meant to write about this the other day but I never found time - my physical acting class with Orlando Pabotoy has been doing really amazing work (similar to Ken Schatz) in lowering the inhibitions and silencing the inner critic and allowing for mistakes to be made and to truly live in them, fully. Because the mistakes he's guiding us into making are wonderful and fun and proving the point that mistakes are more engaging and beautiful than taking everything too seriously.

Love love.

I'm Lacking Inspiration, Today

Yesterday was a good day, today was an okay day. Creatively I'm just pooped. Exhausted. I want to sleep all the time and I dread the physical exertion of the next day. I'm emotional eating. I'm bored eating. I'm eating. MUNCHIES.

I think I'm going to grow out my hair. Maybe go until my birthday without cutting any significant length off of it. See what happens.

Here are a few things to share with you while I work out my artistic kinks.

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A song they used in New York Theatre Workshop and Elevator Repair Service's THE SELECT - THE SUN ALSO RISES.

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A link to an interesting blog post by one of my favorite haunted house creators in NYC - it's about the theatrical experience, not just pop scares, and that I appreciate. He writes about his artistic struggle to maintain his vision and storytelling truth instead of resorting to gore-tastic pop scares. CLICK TO READ.

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Some quotes by Harold Pinter from a speech he made at the National Student Drama Festival in Bristol, 1962.

"We don't carry labels on our chests, and even though they are continually fixed to us by others, they convince nobody."

"I suggest there can be no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false."

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A quote from Maria Irene Fornes, playwright.

"Art is completely religion."

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And last but not least, a quote from George Clooney, as written in an interview conducted by Parade Magazine.

I was a baseball player in school. I had a good arm, I could catch anything, but I was having trouble hitting, I would be like, "I wonder if I'll hit it; just let me hit the ball." And then I went away for the fall, learned how to hit, and by my sophomore year I'd come to the plate and think, "I wonder where I want to hit the ball, to the left or right?" Just that little bit of skill and confidence changed everything. Well, I had to treat acting like that. I had to stop going to auditions thinking, "Oh, I hope they like me." I had to go in thinking I was the answer to their problem. You could feel the difference in the room almost immediately.

The greatest lesson I learned was that sometimes you have to fake it. And you have to be willing to fail.