Kickass

The one thing I don't like about winter is the lack of thunderstorms. They fascinate me - I love being outside in them. I used to go out back in my bare feet and a swimsuit and dance to them. It's music, with drumming and cracks, and it's so beautiful. It's raw power, something completely wild.

There was the first one of the year last night. My rehearsal was in a different place, one with huge windows, and the lightening was forking like crazy across the sky to the South. It lit the sky up all purple, and the sound was incredible.

It's completely different in the spring - in August and October you get the glowering skies and the oppressive heat, and you can feel the air buzzing. In the spring, like yesterday, there's none of that. Just wind.

Oh, I've missed the storms.

Kickass-er

I was arriving at my teacher's office (I have many professors - this one is my teacher. There's a difference.) She was speaking with David Bird about that bird program I mentioned a few days ago. He's one of the coordinators, and I overheard her mention my name, and to watch for my application. Apparently, '[my] schoolwork is erratic, but [my] fieldwork is consistently of the highest quality'.

I left and came back so she wouldn't think I'd overheard. Put me in a good mood though.

Other cool thing! Quebec is having a change of government. I wasn't particulalry happy with the party who had the majority, and the new one will probably not live up to expectations either, but we can hope. And, best of all, it looks like the person who was representative for my riding (and don't get me STARTED on gerrymandering!) will be out. I detest that woman. I would like to infect her with a particularly itchy and difficult to dislodge rectal parasite (non-fatal or health-threatening - I'm not that vindictive.)

Difficult thing - among the schools I've applied to next year is the University of Acadia, in Theatre Arts. I got a letter from them today, and they want me to either a)set up an interview (impossible) or b) send them an audition tape.

Eek.

What on EARTH shall I do with this? None of the parts I've played have any decent monologues (except the monologue I wrote, directed, produced, and played in Sec. 5, when I was sixteen!). How on Earth will I tape one? I don't have access to video equipment - I could maybe see if anyone knows anyone in Film, but...

Added to which, what if I get accepted, and it's my third choice, and bump out someone who wants to do this with their life? Yes, it's something I love to do, and yes, I could enjoy doing this for the rest of my life (I could be a waitress *g*)... but there's so much else I could be happy doing. They accept an average of twenty students a year. *bites nails*

I'm good. I can act. I'm a good stage tech. I'm good at doing sound.

But I would hate to be accepted and then turn it down if I got accepted elsewhere in Env. St.

*crisis*

One worry down

Acadia wants an audiocassette, not a video cassette

I don't have audio recording equipment, but that, at least, might be easier to find. Added to which, I don't have to perform a piece - I can read a poem, if I want...

Now. Pablo Neruda, Edna St. Vincent Mallay, Emily Dickinson, or Robert Service? (The Cremation of Sam McGee might be really cool... but it's probably been done. Neruda would be original - he's not very well-known. Must ponder.)

I have until the end of April.

Any suggestions?

Reprieve

Got an email from my psych teacher today. Since there's a backlog of orals, I don't have to do mine until Thursday.

This is a Good Thing. Not because I wasn't ready, you realise. This is one of the easiest (or hardest) oral topics I've ever had - pick something, an event, a plece, a collection of experiences, anything, that has helped make you who you are, and present it.

I picked poetry. I plan to read some of my stuff, as well as a Neruda excerpt (And there I was without a face/And it touched me), and I've been dreading it a little. (Can one dread a little? Or is Dread automatically a Lot?)

I'm okay with posting it online, some of it at least. I don't mind my poetry being read - I mean it to be read, it looks good written down... but reading it out loud always makes me hear all the little details that don't quite sing the way I want them to, and I'm always afraid I'll bore people, and I have to then look at their faces...

And my poems are me. "You won't believe I'm every word that I write down/Who I am is to far gone/and can't be found" (Jann Arden). My poems are my hurts and my joys and my quiet moments and the things I find beautiful. I lay myself on every page. That's me they'll be hearing, a part of me they don't usually see. I am happy and hyper and ... what's the word Eric used? Ebullient, that was it.

It's so very difficult to take off the masks. But that is the purpose of this exercise.

(For anyone interested, the poems I'm reading are my untitled Winter Poem, Unsent Letter to My Mother, and Love Dreamed Aloud. I'd like to read Variations on a Busker's Theme, but it doesn't seem read-aloud-able.)