| Everything, it must belong somewhere. |
[03 Nov 2009|04:52pm] |
Sometimes I just need to keep my goddamn mouth shut. I need to leave well-enough alone.
I spent what must have been a good half hour of one of my classes arguing with the professor, convinced we weren't arguing. But of course we were, because that is all I can do. And looking back, I could not tell you what we were arguing about, or what his position was, or really what I was saying either. I now know what I was getting at, but the actual conversation was a different beast. And I ended up being really hurt, because we both were fundamentally misreading what the other person was saying. And I honest to God did not want to argue, just discuss a point about rehearsal protocol within the university system.
But damn it all, I am tired of being on the receiving end of the Shutdown Operation. It goes something like this: Person A senses a conflict in the conversation with Person B. Person A chooses to be proactively defensive by shutting down any option for discussion on a point, be it by claiming one of their undeniable traits to be a position of authority, or by qualifying alternatives out of existence. For instance: I am Irish, so any discussion about culture on the British Isles, Irish dialects, even the Beatles defers to my authority. Disregard the fact that I left Ireland when I was six years old. Another example: I am allowed to tell you that your ideas about how to give notes in rehearsal is wrong because I have worked professionally in theatre longer than you have. Disregard the fact that you get the desired effect out of your actors using your method. Or a qualifying example: Any honest cop will tell you that the police were ordered to Shoot to KIll right after Katrina. If they don't tell you that, they must not be an honest cop. Only option available.
The worst part is how ashamed I am about arguing with this professor in front of the other 2 people in the class. He called me out on just wanting to be contrary, which is another fucking Shutdown (if you disagree, it just proves his point). But he may have been right. I don't think so, though. We were just on completely different pages, and I'm frustrated that I allowed him to get to me, and that he seemed genuinely hurt at one point. Which I didn't want to do, because I like the guy. I just wish he wasn't such a condescending dick sometimes.
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[01 Nov 2009|04:43pm] |
November is my favorite month. The weather starts to really bite, boots and scarves break out of the closet, the car heater gets turned on, another blanket is put on the bed, socks are worn at night, darkness creeps up on the afternoon- everything points to change. Then of course, at the end of the month is Thanksgiving. Skipping the half day of school on Wednesday to make the 6 hour drive up to Grandma and Grandpa's. Post-breakfast walks around Pendle Hill and Crum Creek, running into awkward Quaker teens and friendly middle-aged couples. Football in the living room. Pre-breakfast cereal with Melanie and Grandma. Shopping at Granite Run and Brandywine. If I was lucky, a foray into the city itself, or at least up to Reading. Although the lucky part was the stories Grandma and Grandpa would tell while we were there; running into a trolleycar at this intersection, working at that factory, catching that train up to New York for the latest Ethel Merman show.
So of course, I get homesick every November. It's about 70 degrees here- cool in comparison to a week ago, but warm in comparison to home. I don't even have my boots here, and the only reason there's a second blanket on the bed is that the A/C is still on in the apartment and Alison always steals one. And once again, I will be here for Thanksgiving. Not that I mind- it's expensive to go home, I will have just seen my parents the previous weekend, and I'll go home for Winter Break less than a month later. But I miss Grandma and Grandpa's house. The vine-covered granite walls at the end of the driveway. The neighbor across the street with ridiculous Christmas decorations. Eleanor coming over with her sheepdog Willie, especially when she has put a bow in his hair. Having a giant turkey at 3:00 in the afternoon in the dining room. A complete collection of LIFE magazine in the basement- seriously, a copy of every issue ever printed.
I miss being able to take one day at a time. Ever since I've been at Tulane, I've been asked what I'm going to do when I graduate. Here it is, once and for all:
I don't have a fucking clue. And I don't care.
I am so ready to go back to a daily life. I want a job that I don't care too much about, a dog that I care a lot about, a cozy apartment with a full kitchen and room for all my books. I want a routine. I want something to depend on besides myself. Because I am pretty shaky on the reliability front.
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| it's a lion, after all |
[16 Sep 2009|11:21pm] |
I re-read William Inge's Come Back, Little Sheba this morning. What struck me most was the brutality of the play- Doc goes after Lola with a hatchet in a drunken rage, for chrissakes. It made me realize that I have a very sanitized view of American drama: I expect neat, living room arguments that will resolve themselves or break the family, but no one to get hit or hurt. But it happens, in Sheba, in Streetcar, in August: Osage County even. But all three aggressors in those plays are raging on booze and pills.
So my question becomes: why do we portray so much drinking and pill-popping, especially as destructive elements? Dear God, if George and Martha didn't drink they'd be dead. Is it a distinctly American sentiment? I can't think of another strain of alcohol-induced abuse in dramatic literature. So really: what about America/being American drives us to drink? Why is alcohol abused, rather than enjoyed? What makes that a universal experience for an American audience? Does the substance replace the person behind it?
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| whoawhoawhoa. |
[15 Sep 2009|11:25pm] |
I read the first Surrealist Manifesto of Andre Breton last night. In a nutshell: what an irresponsible, lazy fuck-up.
His idea of how surreal literature works reminded me a lot of my high school European History class' discussion of anarchy: sounds really tantalizing, but completely useless because it is totally lazy. True anarchy cannot sustain itself. The second individual desires conflict, it kills itself off. The idea of living without governing rules or law is selfish and takes no consideration of your fellow anarchists, yet the second you do, you cease to become an anarchy. So any anarchy that manages to avoid killing itself off is no longer anarchy, just people to lazy to codify their social law.
I don't really know that the metaphor completely applies, but Breton basically argued for writing stemming from the unconscious, for the absence of editing, of plot, of character, of the work and mastery of writing. Writing in this pure form is closer to truth, for it comes purely from imagination. But what Messr. Breton forgets is the compelling factor: why should anyone read that stream of shit coming out of your pen? Sure, write all you want, but unless you are the Messiah of creative writing, you will have to go make cuts, get to the action, create something unique and important.
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On that note, I have recently finished a book that I wish had been force-fed to me since Day 1 of college. David Ball's Backwards and Forwards is a remarkably clear and simple manifesto on the art of reading plays. Therefore, it is also undeniably a manifesto on writing plays. And it is staggeringly easy to comprehend. Forget all the bullshit and get to the point. What's happening? What's the deal? Why does this particular instance matter?
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| Onfire |
[14 Sep 2009|11:46am] |
I get to do an Honor's Thesis yay!
I'm doing an Honor's Thesis. Shit.
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The above were my simultaneous reactions to getting an extension on my honors courses requirements, which of course means I am now eligible to complete a thesis. I have yet to get the ball rolling, but now I know there is a ball. And it has to go somewhere. Soon. So there's that.
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| Change your mind. |
[08 Sep 2009|10:18pm] |
I think I may have found a new work of literature that will completely blast the hinges off my brain. I was reading excerpts of Blaise Cendrars' La Prose du Transsiberien (translated, of course- my French is pretty awful) for my Avant-Garde colloquium and just felt my brain sink into the words on the page. Cendrars, although disclaiming any inference that he was a Futurist, held many similar ideas; he believed that life itself was art, that we live in the instantaneous, simultaneous NOW and our art should show that. The work above is actually a free-verse poem called prose in conjunction with a 7-foot tall painting by Sonia Delaunay dedicated "to the musicians." He mixed and matched, collaged, became the mad scientist that Jim has gone on about for years. But it clicked in a way it never had before. Of course, I get what Jim's been saying all along, but it lined up with this guy, these guys so well- take something unexpected and put it into a new shape, mash things up, fragment, create life out of machinery, confuse the then and now because it is all NOW.
I know this sounds crazy, I know. But it makes so much sense in my head that I can't get it out logically: the neurons are firing lightyears ahead of my fingers. But the idea of the Futurists, one of them, was to disclaim the past, erase it, cross it out. We deal with the now, with what's happening now, from instant to instant, moment to moment. So looking at Picasso or Braque, I see that Cubism is the same thing- moment to moment. Point to point. Revelling in all at once. Eliminating the funnel and seeing several vantage points simultaneously. And collage is just another step. Take something unfamiliar and put it in your art. Now the newspaper is still newspaper, but also a bottle. But also a canvas for the sketch on the bottle. And who's to say what it ever really was, definitively?
And making art is the same thing. It's not like I'm going to think of something that has never been thought of, that's absurd. But I will think of two things, three that have been done. And I will put them into an arrangement that hasn't been tried. And within those one or two things, I will switch the inner workings, exchange one gear for another, replace a fanbelt with a fingernail and see if the machine will run now. Dismember in order to remember. Things only are because of what they are not. Meaning is only referential.
God, I feel like such an intellectual prick. It's a great, stupendous, amazing feeling. I want to read. To devour words. To consume ideas.
I have to find this poem in full.
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| Aida, et al |
[07 Sep 2009|03:11pm] |
Aida is officially open and going fine. It's been a good experience for me, meeting good people and all that nonsense. The show itself is cheesy, and I don't know that our production is that good, but I still get paid so whatevs.
In other news, I am already behind. Not very much, and I should be able to catch up tonight and tomorrow, but what a bummer. I slept through my alarm Thursday morning and missed my first class of the semester. I'm still kicking myself for that, I was so convinced that I wasn't going to skip class this semester. And I probably could have made it- very late, but been there- if I'd jumped out of bed and gotten ready. But once I saw the clock I just gave up. Bad habit to get into.
I am trying to be more organized- keeping a planner, which is a first for me. I just don't know that I'm made for school. Helen mentioned that to me once, and I think she's right. I like learning and working on projects, but not juggling several projects that I'm interested in while keeping appointments and going to classes. I just want to do my work and call it a day. Fortunately, I am almost done.
I also want to write notes/letters via postal mail, rather than this digital nonsense. So I guess corralling mailing addresses is my next non-school task.
My brain is composed of birdshot.
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| I've got to leave old Durham Town |
[01 Sep 2009|05:23pm] |
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Roger Whittaker "Durham Town" |
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Today is Aunt Betsy's birthday. I have been debating calling her all day; I just can't bring myself to do it. But I have been relentlessly and embarassingly shook up all day. To the point that I asked a question in Shad's class, allowed the situation to escalate, and was silently and uncontrollably bawling by the end. It was pretty awful.
Also, I apparently do not get to write a Honor's Thesis or graduate with honors. Apparently the quota of honors classes was supposed to be met in 6 semesters, not 8 like I thought. And it seems non-negotiable. Which really blows and is kind of a blessing. At least for now.
Holy god I am drained. Tonight we have first dress for Aida, which is also the first run-through for the cast. Ridiculous? I think so. We have an audience tomorrow and open Thursday. Yikes.
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| A Fond Farewell? |
[01 Sep 2009|01:28am] |
My last year of organized education is upon me. And it is terrifying.
I am enjoying all of my classes so far. Alison and I are sharing an apartment/suite with two other girls, but we seem to stay out of each others' way mostly. And we have a kitchen, which is nice. I made strawberry pie. Speaking of Alison, we've been together for a few weeks more than a year now. Which is also terrifying, but in an amazing way.
I am running the fly rail for Aida at Le Petit Theatre. Which is fun- I've never crewed a fly rail before, and the cast is full of wonderful people. The tech was very unprofessionally handled and the director is pretty dreadful, though.
My aunt's birthday is tomorrow. After seeing her a few weeks ago, I quickly decided I cannot afford to skip classes this semester; I may need the absences to go to her funeral. I went to Walgreen's today to get her a card, and after reading the sappy ones about what a wonderful person you are (she's not really), or hope your year is full of wonder( I doubt she'll make the year), I found one about the world needing her just as she is. And quite embarassingly just openly started weeping. It was the first time the totality of the situation hit me: my aunt broke my family apart, created a rift that will never heal, that has put my mother and sister on one side, my grandmother, aunts and cousin on the other, and left me somewhat dangling in the chasm by the very nature of my absence. And now she is slowly, painfully dying. Yet she refuses to talk to my sister, or even talk about her to my mother.
Every day I spend away, a little more of home disappears. Home is forgetting me, it seems.
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| whew. |
[25 Jun 2009|08:24am] |
So I broke my car Monday. And by that I mean, backed my passenger side mirror into a telephone pole. Stupid, unfortunate and costly mistake. So while Gunter sits in Metairie waiting for the new mirror to arrive and be installed, I have been coming to Tulane with Alison in time for Patchwork every morning. In other words, 9:00 AM. And due to my box office job and rehearsals for Fighting With Two Hands, I remain on campus until approximately 12:30 AM. So I'm a bit tuckered.
Anyway, the summer has been going nicely. Jeff and Lisa left yesterday, so whenever Alison and I get a few hours of free time, at the same time, we're moving to the Marigny. My job is alright- the ticket-selling part is fine and easy, but the keeping-up-with-numbers part is a little tricky, particularly because there isn't really an organized system in place that I could be trained into, so I've been somewhat making it up until I realize I'm doing something wrong, then trying to fix the error. But I get decent money to sit in an air conditioned office alone every afternoon, so that's nice.
King Lear went quite well. It was a bit intimidating at first, coming into rehearsals completely unprepared with actors who've been treading the boards longer than I've been alive. But they listened to me and seemed to think I had good ideas, which made me think that just maybe I'm not too shabby at this directing thing. God, I hope not.
Fighting With Two Hands is also going well. It's tough because we can't rehearse until after The Comedy of Errors finishes every night, due to Sam being in the cast and me working the house, so rehearsals are quite late. But everyone is focusing, listening, and working hard to make Helen's play look damn good. I'm not quite sure I'm excited to be onstage again, but it should be interesting if nothing else.
Also, because I have a few hours on campus every morning, I've gone back to what little self-discipline I have and am reading a play a day again. It's only started this week, but I knocked out T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party (weird) and David Rabe's Those the River Keeps. I'm reading Rabe's Hurlyburly today, then onto grander things. Hopefully, this will little bit of self-training I can muster will provide some divine inspiration for my thesis, of which I shall speak more soon.
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[13 Apr 2009|01:24pm] |
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Yesterday was a disappointing, infuriating day. And that's all I'm going to say about it.
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[17 Mar 2009|09:51am] |
The things I have to do and the things I want to do are not always the same things, and I can't always do both. Yet I nearly always choose what I want versus what I need. I can manage to rehearse 20 hours a week and feel good about that, but not purge a couple of pages or critique for classes, or to find the time or focus to read about semiotics. And I think rehearsals are going well and that I may actually be able to do this with my life, which is awesome, but I feel like if I can't even do my work for classes there's no way I can be good at this, and I feel like this semester I've made the most improvement as an actor because a certain professor is on sabbatical and off my back, and what does that say about my education? or my work ethic? and I just want to curl up and read books about the show until I go rehearse the show and then come back and read some more. And I've really been missing Denis, and regretting never telling him how much I cared about him, how much of an asshole he was, and how much hurt adding those two together equals. and I'm so jealous of Alison, because she had a very similar experience with someone in a theater she worked at right before coming to Tulane, but she grew some stones and told her, and she got to experience something that I never will. and every time something that might be good for me starts to get a little hard, the walls come back up again. I stopped going to the counselor I had been seeing. I stopped trusting him.
and this whole rant was to try to dissolve the ball of panic in my belly that rose up when I realized I had run out of procrastination techniques and had to write a paper now. I'm not sure yet if it helped.
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| On Hannah's return to grace... |
[09 Mar 2009|11:56pm] |
Not too much to report, other than that Soul of the City rehearsals are officially underway, and I feel refreshed and renewed. Not working on a show for so long really killed any ambition and motivation I may have once had. But now they're both back. I'll finally be a responsible student again.
It really just comes down to a barter system, the mentality that "I have to do my work so that I can go to the theatre for a few hours tomorrow." So when you take away having to go to the theatre, the reasoning for getting the work done also disappears. But now it's back, and I feel great!
More news later, I suppose. Right now I have to do my homework.
ETA: Huh. Another reason for my positive demeanor.
A certain person-that-I'd-wronged finally wrote be back. And forgave me.
Awesome.
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| What's the use in trying? |
[26 Feb 2009|10:33pm] |
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"When You Were Young," the Killers |
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Two things that worry me, despite being completely uninvolved with them:
1- Nolan Smith was floored on a pretty intense screen last night and suffered a mild concussion. The official news is that his return is "uncertain."
2- Steven Page left Barenaked Ladies. In hindsight, this has been inevitable since July, but it's still upsetting to think about the band that defined my adolescence moving on without him.
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I spent Mardi Gras in bed all day. Then Alison and I got ice cream for dinner. Then she cut my hair. It's pretty awesome, I must say. If I ever take a picture of it that I like, I may be more self-indulgent than usual and share.
Also, I am giving up meat for Lent. Now, many of you may be thinking, " But Hannah, you're not even Christian, much less Catholic. Why on Earth are you putting yourself through the pain and suffering of vegetarian dining on a college meal plan when you are not spiritually guilted into it?"
And to you I say, "Exactly."
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| precisely because I do not have the time... |
[16 Feb 2009|11:52pm] |
...is why I am posting once again.
Alison and I had a very lovely, low-key Valentine's weekend. It involved the French Market, fondue, and being ridiculously happy. Hopefully, we will have just as much fun this weekend, as it marks both Mardi Gras and our six-month anniversary. I cannot believe it's only been six months. I cannot wait for the next six.
Tomorrow is my Film Theory midterm. Thus why I am rambling on here instead of studying. Because I am once again terrified. I have convinced myself it is easier to not do anything at all and face the consequences than to actually get my work done. This mindset is proving problematic. I still have not done the work for my Incomplete class. The thought has crossed my mind to just drop this class, take the W, let my GPA take the F, and just drop my Film Studies major rather than do it. But then I remember how absolutely insane that is and how big of a pansy I am being, and I stop looking for ways out of this hole and simply go back to just being paralyzed by the enormity of this work.
Which leads me to the next point- I started seeing a counselor weekly. I kind of call it "therapy" but don't like to think of it as any more than an educational resource- that contrast in and of itself is ridiculous. We mostly talk about how things are going with Alison and my anxiety- only this week did we start talking about time management. I realized that I am pretty aware of my weaknesses in managing time, as well as what I need to do in order to get things accomplished. The failure lies in my lack of discipline to do those things, which is most disheartening of all. I'm a fucking coward, afraid of doing something hard. Although now that I think about it, I'm not afraid. I'm just really fucking stubborn. I never had to work hard for A's before, and I'll be damned if I start now. Which is quite an unfortunate mindset. Nonetheless, hopefully my honest, factual explanation to my professor tomorrow about why I still do not have the work done, and do not expect her sympathy but am taking steps to identify my own faults, will buy me enough time to kill this ghost.
I've also been reading a ridiculous amount of Questionable Content. Yet another reason I have accomplished nothing.
Do or die time, I suppose. If you need me, I'll (hopefully) be studying.
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| Drained |
[24 Jan 2009|02:36pm] |
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Drive-By Truckers/Brothers Creeggan/Scott Miller and the Commonwealth, etc. |
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Two weeks in, and I feel drained. Not burnt out, or tapped out, or anything that hints to not having anything left. I'm just running on reserves right now, and i could really use a booster.
Last night Alison and I tried to see Slumdog Millionaire, but of course, not being able to do anything right recently, we got there late, and I HATE going into a theater once the film has started. We considered going home, but stayed to go to the last screening of Milk. But of course, as I walk into the theater with a full 60 seconds to spare, I look on screen and see that I missed all of the credits. 0-2 on punctuality.
So of course I didn't like it. I sat there for most of it pissed off that I missed the beginning, when I wasn't internally screaming at Gus van Sant for not just letting me see someone's face when they were talking. The rest of the time I was so anxious I couldn't sit still, I just kept squirming around hoping it would be over soon. Nonetheless, my simplistic and biased evaluation is this: A lot of good acting mixed with a lot of bad filmmaking and mediocre story development.
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I had a Facebook message this morning from a teacher at my high school, saying she was randomly surfing around and found my Livejournal, and she hoped it was alright that she read it, but she liked how I write, etc. When I stopped my tiny freak-out at the realization that people I like and care about actually read this, I remembered that that is precisely the reason I keep this public- well, mostly. Most of you know how horrible I am at actually communicating....well, anything. I want people that care about me to know how I am, I just am not really capable of telling them.
So please forgive me if my writing sounds a bit stilted for the next few entries. I am trying to forget that you are out there.
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| and I knew that you meant it |
[15 Jan 2009|12:58am] |
I want to start this entry by stating that my media player just transitioned from Dashboard Confessional's "Hands Down" to Toni Braxton's "Un-Break My Heart."
And I will end it by saying that in Jazz Dance today, we warmed up with the Cupid Shuffle.
I think that big, chunky middle part, where I tell you about how I've been and what I've been doing and my life goals and dreams can be inferred from the two above facts.
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| Walk me down your broken line |
[07 Jan 2009|01:22am] |
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Wheel of Fortune |
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Well, I'm not starting the new year well:
- My laptop is non-functional. Unlike when the CD drive stopped working, I called tech support the day it died, and Glen the helpful IT guy thinks it's my A/C adapter, so I should have a new one tomorrow or Thursday. However, this delays the work for my Incomplete class, which leads me to...
- I haven't done any of that work. So although I emailed the professor about my laptop, it's not like I'm actually being delayed, seeing as I haven't done any work to begin with. I have 3 days to do a film journal and a paper. True, my first class with that professor is Tuesday, but still.
- I have no idea what I'm going to use for auditions. I have read one, lone play this semester, which, while brilliant (August: Osage County for those keeping score) didn't really lend anything I thought I could use. And I do this every semester, leaving it until the last minute.
- I have gone to one movie in theaters since last semester started. One. No James Bond. No Benjamin Button. Not even my dear Viggo Mortensen could drag me to the theater this fall. Only a spur of the moment jaunt to a late night showing of Rachel Getting Married. Which, granted, was pretty alright. But it bums me out just to think about how much I neglected what used to be my lone solace.
But I'm not all pouty:
- I spent five days, including New Year's, in Baltimore with Alison. It was wonderful meeting her family and friends, and exploring her hometown with her.
- Tory is here now. We're gonna hang until heading back to New Orleans.
- I spent quality time with both Erin and Frank before they headed back to their respective universities, as well as seeing Holly Anne.
- After spending time with my family this break, I feel much closer to not only my sister, but also my cousin Ashley. We don't have a lot in common, but we have a very similar sense of humour. It's a little easier to stomach family functions when I know someone I'm not too awkward around will be there.
- My new car is really fucking groovy.
So, there's a very disjointed update. I think if I could just buckle down and force myself out of inaction, my life would be a flash of brilliance. I am entirely convinced that I am capable of that. I just have to DO it.
Also, I'm now addicted to Weeds and the Rachel Maddow Show.
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[24 Dec 2008|10:52am] |
My father's mother had a cyst taken off her face last week. Her husband (also my grandfather) has a bad hip.
A few days ago, they went to one of their favorite antique stores. She walked in with a patch under her right eye, and he with a cane. The manager sees them and says, "Boy, that must have been one hell of a fight!"
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| Elsewhere... |
[22 Dec 2008|11:52pm] |
I got a new car.
So I've got that going for me.
Which is nice.
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