Melissa Dunphy's Journal

But you'll look sweet upon the seat of an Advanced Elements Inflatable Kayak built for two

2009-06-23T19:55:00.011-04:00

From June 6 through June 12, Matt and I kayaked nearly 113 miles on the Schuylkill River Sojourn, paddling by day and camping by night, and eating VAST amounts of delicious food provided by the organizers at least three times a day. Along the way, we saw egrets, snakes, turtles, raccoons and bald eagles. Occasionally we saw the ill effects of human beings on the river environment - such as a fairly sickening gasoline spill all over the water at Reading.

Pictures speak louder than words, and there are links to a bunch of pictures below by the sojourn photographer, Cody Goddard, but if there are any words to be said about our awesome adventure, I should probably spend them on our kayak, which almost monopolized our conversations with other kayakers. When we showed up at the crack of dawn on day one with our Advanced Elements AdvancedFrame inflatable kayak (in tandem mode, though it converts to a single) in the back of the hatchback, we were met with skepticism by the sojourn organizers. "An inflatable? That won't do. We had some sojourners with an inflatable kayak once. They swapped it out before lunchtime on the first day." But we argued our way onto the water and proved them wrong.

On every day of the sojourn, we were at or near the front of the pack, and we didn't feel the wind affected our kayak any more than any of the others. The boat never sprang a leak, and the hull remained sound despite traveling through class two rapids and being stuck on jagged river rocks several times. We did benefit from an unusually wet season leaving the river quite high -- I probably wouldn't have been comfortable dragging our boat over rocks as frequently as the veteran sojourners said the trip required in drier years. But by the end of the trip, just by virtue of being there, we had worked wonders for the reputation of inflatable kayaks in the minds of every paddler on the river.

Seriously, Advanced Elements should just pay people to go on these sojourns. Best marketing for them ever. We did write to the company to tell them of our success, and they sent us some swag. But ... Advanced Elements, if you're reading this, seriously, pay us to go on future sojourns! People were remarking as we reached Philadelphia that they wouldn't be surprised to see more inflatables on next year's paddle because of our example. They only need to see them perform to become believers.

And now ... photos! We are still deciding which of these to buy (photographer's gotta earn bread.)

Dear Mr. Shakespeare,

2009-04-22T21:42:00.002-04:00

How are you? I am fine.

It's almost your birthday here in America. Happy birthday! Do you celebrate birthdays when you're dead? Is it weird that we celebrate your birthday? Do you measure time at all when you're dead? I am unsure. Are you in any discomfort? If so, I hope you don't measure time. Or maybe it would be better if you did. I am unsure.

I am currently, this moment, acting in a play you wrote: Hamlet. I think it's a very good play. My favorite part is the "What a piece of work is a man" monologue. I am playing Ophelia. She's a bit damp sometimes, but I guess it's a pretty good role. You should have written more stuff for women. I'm not sure what you really thought about us. All the tragic ones go mad and die. It gets a little repetitive after a while. I say this because I've kind of built half a career on your shoulders, so it's hard not to notice these things. I would like to play Hamlet one day, but everyone would make a big deal out of it because I'm a girl. I don't want to play him because I'm a girl; I want to play him because I think I get him. Ditto Richard III. His gender wasn't really your fault, though.

The last time I played Ophelia, my dad died. This time, my dad's dad died. Do you see them around? I don't really believe in an afterlife, but if you do see them, say hello for me.

People talk such a lot about Ophelia, which is funny, because she's not even on stage all that much, and she doesn't really do anything, aside from go mad and die. Hector Berlioz wrote Symphonie Fantastique after falling in love with an actress playing Ophelia, and he couldn't even understand what she was saying, being French and all. Did you know that already? Do you know everything when you're dead?

Anyway, happy birthday. I have a curtain call now. Thanks for your work.

P.S. What was your inspiration for writing Hamlet? Don't answer that, it was a joke question.

Tangled/Triangle

2009-03-16T23:06:00.005-04:00

Firstly, many thanks to Matt, who took time out from his busy server-moving, Linux-crunching schedule over at the NIN Hotline to iron out a few bugs on the performance page, huzzah. While he was at it, I replaced a couple of the sidebar widgets on this blog page which were unsatisfactory. The Flickr slideshow I had been using, for example, suddenly started sprouting ads. Goddamn.

Last week, Network for New Music performed my latest piece, Tangled/Triangle, a sound/art collaboration with the amazing artist Becca Burrow:

This Thursday, a 20-minute selection from my Gonzales Cantata is being performed at the West Chester University New Music Concert (free admission!), along with lots of fantastic music from fellow WCU students and some lesser known amateurs named Lutoslawski and Corigliano. Once that's done, I'll augment the rehearsal session and full performance with the new audio, and hopefully have a really good recording to add to the official cantata website and send around with the score.

In the meantime, I am desperately trying to juggle Macbeth performances, Hamlet rehearsals, my teaching schedule, and the final weeks of my undergraduate degree. Despite this craziness, I managed to find time last week to discover the perfect necklace, which I would probably buy if I had ever spent anything close to $250 on an item of jewelry in my life.

A dream, and dreams

2009-03-10T23:39:00.004-04:00

Right before I woke this morning, I dreamed I went to a doctor complaining of feeling tired all the time (I do. IRL, I mean. It's disconcerting. I've slept 8-9 hours every night this week.). The doctor listened to my symptoms, nodded sagely, and gave me his verdict: "You have meningitis."

This seemed a perfectly acceptable diagnosis. "Oh no! What do I do?"
"There's a treatment I can give you, but in order to qualify for it, we must find the worm on your body that gave you meningitis."

This was also reasonable. There was a hitch, however. "I haven't seen a worm on my body."

The doctor gave me a knowing look.

"Oh! I mean, sure! There was a worm on my body, sure!"

Just to make the lie more believable, the doctor took a scalpel and made a small cut on my face. "There," he said. "That will be where we took the worm out."

He handed me some kind of prescription, and I walked out of his office. I had nearly reached the street when I felt a sudden wriggling in my shoe. Upon removing the shoe, of course, I found a fat, maggoty worm coming out of my foot. The worm fell to the floor, then morphed according to weird four-dimensional dreamland physics into a black two-headed cat. That is, a cat with a second head where its tail should be. The bidirectional Janus cat ran through a nearby restaurant and dove into a hole in the wall, astonishing the dining guests.

Thus ended the crazy dream. What the hell is that all about?

On another subject, for those who don't follow my Twitter account religiously or converse with me physically, I have proven that if you talk about wanting to do something enough, it will probably come true. I've been accepted into the University of Pennsylvania's Ph.D. program in composition on a Benjamin Franklin fellowship. Come fall, it's Ivy League for free! For better than free, actually; I get a lovely stipend on top of having the tuition and medical comped. And I get to skip my master's degree, which is a nice saving of time and money too.

This means that I will have to give up acting for at least four years. Good thing I'm going out with a bang. Right now I'm playing Lady Macbeth for the Philadelphia Shakespeare Theatre's touring version of Macbeth, and I'm in rehearsals for Hamlet at the Lantern Theater, in which I'm playing Ophelia. There will be days later this season when I play Lady M in the morning and Ophelia in the evening. They both end up the same way; if something goes wrong in any of my performances, all I have to remember is to lose my mind and stumble off-stage to die.

I suppose it's possible that all this craziness has something to do with the crazy dreams.

Popular Culture Says: Black men and Asian ladies love each other.

2009-01-23T21:55:00.008-05:00

I've always hated the way we're all conditioned by the media and pop culture to stick to our own race in relationships, no doubt because I'm a mongrel. Age three: blonde Barbie was encouraged to date blond Ken, and [insert ethnicity] Barbie ended up with [insert ethnicity] Ken. It made sense to everyone after the lesson about fitting round and square pegs in their respective holes. On TV through the 80's: mainstream families were one race (Family Ties) or another (The Cosby Show), but rarely both or anything else, unless a big deal was made of the racial issue. Even today, I always get a good chuckle about the predictability of movie couples pairing up because they look like one another*. I scored free tickets to the egregious Dungeons and Dragons movie a few years ago, and of course, the white hero ended up with blonde heroine, while his black sidekick didn't give her much of a second look after spying a hot black female elf. Oh, she was an entirely different species, and hundreds of years older than said black sidekick, but she was black, so naturally they hooked up.

*What's up with that? Hello? Inbreeding?

Speaking of Marlon Wayans, see also Requiem for a Dream, in which he played a black sidekick of a very different nature, who also had a black girlfriend, unlike his skinny white friend, who had Jennifer Connolly -- who proved by the end of the movie that mixing races and sex is every nightmare come true at once.

In the last decade-and-a-half, though, ethnicity cocktails have become suddenly cool, at least on TV. It seems Hispanic people look the most like white people (before moving to the US, I never thought of them as separate), so having J.Lo and George Clooney fall in love onscreen was easy. But what about those other pesky races? Black people and Asians look very different from whites, and Mr. and Mrs. Middle-America may not be quite comfortable yet with the thought of them bumping up against white genitals (except in Mr. Middle-America's porn collection). So why not pair them with each other?

Wait, silly me, I forgot that Asian men are invisible. OK, black men and Asian ladies, then? Perfect! Like Ming-Na and Mekhi Phifer on ER. And Sandra Oh and Isaiah Washington on Grey's Anatomy. And Tamlyn Tomita and Joe Morton on Eureka. And others I've spotted which you can probably name.

Apparently it's called Blasian love or something. There's a Facebook group for it.

Why not? After all, Thurgood Marshall married a Filipina. And now all those Blaxploitation films make sense. Maybe we'll get a few more Tiger Woods out of it, too, and eventually a Hiro from Snow Crash. And if they practice hard and do a good job, maybe one day minority men will earn a chance with some of those magic untouchable white wimmin. Yes, we can!

EXTRA: I <3 you, Yahoo Answers. Q and first A are pure gold.

On Ambition II: Still Hating Yourself and Loving It

2008-09-25T14:04:00.011-04:00

A man's worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.
-- Marcus Aurelius

If you would attain to what you are not yet, you must always be displeased by what you are. For where you are pleased with yourself there you have remained. Keep adding, keep walking, keep advancing.
-- St. Augustine

Ambition has its disappointments to sour us, but never the good fortune to satisfy us. Its appetite grows keener by indulgence and all we can gratify it with at present serves but the more to inflame its insatiable desires.
-- Benjamin Franklin

Desire is the root of evil.
-- Gautama Siddharta

After focusing on real life for a while, I suppose it's time to return to the question of ambition that I've been avoiding because it feels like I need to write a thesis. Which I don't have time to write. But here are some casual thoughts on the replies below.

I'm not angry at my parents, and it doesn't feel right to me that others should condemn them for the way I was raised. As Adam said, I understand their motivation. Maybe it has a lot to do with the fact that my mother grew up in fairly horrific circumstances. One of ten children, she survived the Cultural Revolution by eating scraps and vermin before swimming to Hong Kong at the age of 22 to escape. I don't think anyone who hasn't experienced that kind of poverty and hardship can possibly understand what it takes to survive. I can philosophically ponder the necessity of ambition on the internet like a wanker; to my mother, ruthless tenacity and the relentless drive to succeed were needed just to keep from dying and climb out of the gutter.

Actually, I find I often connect with children-of-immigrants because they have a similar relationship with their parents. When people survive a war, or famine, or the Holocaust, or some kind of displacement, and manage to pick themselves up and move across the world to find a better life, they frequently seem to come out of it with a similar appreciation of ambition and hard work. Or maybe it was in their temperament to begin with, and that's why they immigrated. Chicken/egg.

Abuse is a very loaded word. I do not consider myself abused, but I don't know where I draw the line on what "abuse" is. Certainly, sexual abuse is abuse. Beating. Malicious intent. Neglect. Beyond that, it's hard for me to say exactly what is absolutely right and wrong. Who sets the standard? I'm sure I could point to any parent on the planet and find something in their technique to call abuse; all parents make mistakes. When does a mistake become abuse? When does it even become a mistake?

My mother considers the laissez-faire parenting practices of many Western families to be child abuse. I'm not kidding; she's expressed this opinion many times. A classmate of mine was very intelligent but didn't study or perform well academically; my mother privately criticized her parents for not having the courage and strength to push their child to achieve. To her, failing to engender ambition in one's children is akin to failing to teach them moral values or the basic skills needed to survive in the world. My mother has the same reaction to the "Be proud of yourself! Just do your best! Be whatever you want to be!" style of parenting as (I assume) you have watching incompetent parents struggle with their undisciplined, useless brats on Nanny 911 or Maury. She just draws the line in a different place. "Why wouldn't every good parent want their child to succeed, to be the best?"

It's easy to read my last entry on ambition and assume I had a deeply unhappy childhood, but I really didn't. There were moments of disappointment, awkwardness, unhappiness - sure, even terror - but I also remember distinctly not wanting to grow up because I loved the life I led. I was taught to love learning, and I was never denied the fulfillment of that desire. I loved achieving, and I loved being the smart kid. I was given a lot of trust and social self-determination. I never wanted materially, and was treated to ridiculous experiences way beyond our socio-economic status, like family trips overseas and a hoity-toity private school that I loved attending -- for god's sake, I went to Space Camp. When I recall my childhood, it averages out to a pretty good one overall.

Similarly, I can see that some people might assume that I'm so driven to succeed that I don't enjoy my life because it's a means to an end. No -- if that were the case, I'd be writing this blog entry between treating patients. I love what I do now, and I can't think of anything I've done in the last five years that was purely a means to an end and not personally fulfilling on its own (aside from a few jobs I've taken to pay rent). I've always believed the journey should be just as wonderful as the destination (which is why I really don't care if someone "spoils" a good movie for me).

So, why this discussion? As the title of these posts makes clear, I have one heck of a love/hate relationship with ambition, and I think ambition is one of the most ambivalently viewed human traits -- in any culture. We strive for contentment, but when someone claims to be content in a state we consider unworthy, we deride them for not being ambitious. Some consider ambition a dirty word and try to rid themselves of all desire (an endeavor which becomes an ambition in itself?). Others see this approach as a kind of oppression invented or re-purposed by those who wish to keep society static. Some believe that without ambition we are nothing. Others believe that ambition makes us slaves.

Do we want ambition, or don't we? How much do we want to achieve in life, and at what cost? Can ambition be turned off like a switch in order to achieve contentment, or does the abandonment of ambition cause a slow sink into resentment and self-loathing? Is there an acceptable middle ground?

I don't advocate paying too high a cost, but if you really believe that my experience was so terrible ... well, to paraphrase Bill Hicks a little: name ten people whose achievements you place in the highest regard, and I guarantee you that most of them will have a drive resulting from some hole in their self-esteem, probably created in their upbringing by their parents. Einstein may not have been gagged and put in a sack (that we know of), but Leopold Mozart placed *far* more pressure on young Wolfgang than my mother ever placed on me (jms, you didn't really think I was going to let that slide, did you?). Are we willing to give up the idea of operating at full potential and the possible results for the sake of a happy childhood or adult contentment? Is it a bad thing that I look at what I've done, and always think to myself, "It's not enough"? Isn't that what keeps one adding, walking, advancing?

The truth is, as much as ambition cripples my self-worth, I fucking love the rush of achieving. I love the motivation it gives me. I love the fact that I can make myself do amazing things by thinking myself into a hole and clawing my way out of it creatively. I love the competition, real or invented. I love the sense of primal satisfaction I feel a moment before I tell myself I'm not good enough, the job's not yet finished, and I ride off to slay another dragon.

But I don't know if it's right to love it.

[Incidentally: on this day, exactly twenty years ago, my mother was admitted to a psych ward for the first time. Ugh, no, don't weep for me or her, I just thought it was interesting.]

Things more important

2008-08-13T12:28:00.003-04:00

Sometime soon, I'll post a part two to the last entry, replying to people's thoughts (which are really great, thank you -- it's a good discussion). But here's a post to say that sometimes we all need to step back and remember how important life is. Just life. Breathing, eating, sleeping. And sometimes we get carried away with drama and love and ambition, but life is more important than all these things, and if we value it the right way, everything else will probably fall into place.

Cancer is a horrible thing, and my heart goes out to people whose families have been affected by it.

Ambition, or Hating Yourself and Loving It

2008-08-06T23:15:00.018-04:00

am-bi-tion
Pronunciation: \am-'bi-shən\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French or Latin; Middle French, from Latin ambition-, ambitio, literally, act of soliciting for votes, from ambire
Date: 14th century

a: an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power
b: desire to achieve a particular end
the object of ambition <her ambition is to start her own business>
a desire for activity or exertion <felt sick and had no ambition>

The noble Brutus hath told you Caesar was ambitious: if it were so, it was a grievous fault, and grievously hath Caesar answered it.

I've been thinking a lot about ambition lately -- about where it comes from, and whether it's a good or bad thing.

I grew up believing that ambition was paramount. Contentment was a dirty word, a state of mind which necessarily breeds stagnation, and which should be left to the inept and the elderly; we should never be content with ourselves and our lot in life, or we won't strive to better ourselves, I thought. Or think. I'm not sure. (That is the question.)

Ambition is a central concept to Chinese (even Asian) culture and outlook. Chinese parents foster ambition in their children in ways which seem brutal to those with a more Western outlook. I understand this, and hold no ill-will towards mine. My mother was ever watchful for and quick to quash laziness and complacency in her daughter. Through my elementary schooling, she rode me hard to achieve academically, and nothing was ever good enough. I remember breaking down in tears in class over test scores as high as 99%. My concerned or incredulous fellow students thought I was exaggerating when I explained how angry my mother would be, but I wasn't paranoid. I held back tears as I met my mother at the school gate, and when I showed her my exam, the first words out of her mouth would be "Only 99%?" I knew the rest of the evening would be spent listening to tirades about how careless I was and how much harder I needed to study. Even if I scored full marks, she'd never show any outward pride or affirmation, instead reminding me of past mistakes and counseling me not to become too confident lest I slip up the next time.

Here's the worst thing my parents ever did. I tell you this not to feel sorry for myself or shock you, but to illustrate how the will to achieve is forced upon kids by the culture in which I was raised. When I was three or four, I threw a tantrum because I didn't want to study. My parents tied me up, stuffed a tea towel into my mouth, and put me in a sack. I remember the smell and taste of the cloth between my teeth, and the tears running down my face and pooling under my cheek. The sack was made of some kind of polyester, which left me stifled and hot as I struggled and tried to scream. While I lay on the floor, they talked within earshot about how useless I was if I didn't work hard, and how they might as well dump me in Musgrave Park to be raised by Aborigines, who would make me drink metho.

This abhorrence, fear almost, of my laziness extended into my adulthood. When I was 24, for example, my mother and I had an enormous fight on the phone because she accused me of being lazy and having fun instead of working hard. At the time, I was working fifteen hours a day at three separate jobs.

I don't think this is particularly unusual for Chinese parents; it's far from the worst story I've heard (I was never kicked across a room, or threatened with amputation, or chained to a toilet). The point is that my parents, like many of their culture, deliberately and systematically undermined my self-esteem to engender ambition. I worked hard because I didn't want to be useless, and they worked hard to make me believe that uselessness was always a possibility. I wanted to make them proud, and they worked hard not to show they were proud so I would keep on working. They did this because, within their culture, doing so is an act of love. They believe that giving a child that unquenchable thirst for achievement is the best thing one can do as a parent, that the result might be the next Einstein or Mozart. It might be hard on your children in the short term, but in the end, they'll thank you, or if they don't, you'll at least know you did what needed to be done.

What makes people do great things? What drives individuals to earn more money than they could ever spend, or practice an instrument until they are the best in the world, or train until they win an Olympic medal, or ignore personal relationships for art, or kill themselves studying radium? It seems common sense to me that many of the most successful people in the world are driven by the same kind of neurosis, stamped upon them by parents or circumstances in the same way. We're never good enough, we have to try to be good enough, we keep trying, sacrificing everything. Some succeed, some don't, but success on that level isn't possible without that abnormal drive. If genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, the greater part of genius is the ability to make the effort.

(Not that I'm a genius. Logic - cats - four legs.)

But this affects us in other ways too. We catastrophize. When your whole life is spent imagining the worst in order to avoid it and capitalizing on the intoxicatingly potent power of self-hatred, it can be hard to turn that off. Unfortunately, while such a schema might succeed when you're finding the motivation to improve a test score from 99% to 100% or impress people with your myriad accomplishments, it might mean that you assume the worst in personal relationships, that you're crippled by feelings of inadequacy. The very thing that makes you do the great things you were programmed to do necessitates terrible insecurities that sabotage happiness.

I'm trying to figure out where my priorities lie. What do I want out of life? Is it OK to be content after all? Should there be compromise, and where should the compromise intersect the opposing viewpoints? I'm struggling with that question. There's a large part of me that still holds contentment in contempt and believes in the schema. But another part sees the damage that it causes and wonders if it's worth it. I don't know what the answer is, or what will come of it. We'll see, I guess.

New dresses at dadadress urrr urrrr want want urrrr

On Saturday, I'm seeing Encounters At the End of the World. <3 to Werner Herzog.

Monkey Hat

2008-08-06T01:38:00.005-04:00

About a year ago, I was walking with Matt on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia just as most of the cute little stores on that street were closing. In the window of one store, I spotted the most awesome collection of knitted animal hats ever. I vowed to come back when the store was open and buy one.

Six months later when I began working in Philly full-time, I searched incessantly during my lunch and after hours for that store. Seriously, I spent hours and hours trudging up and down Chestnut, even branching out to Market, Sansom, Walnut and all the cross streets in case I had mistaken the location. Nada. I also searched furiously on eBay, but could never find the enchanting hats I remembered. I gave up.

But! Today, as I was working on South Street ... I saw them! The store that had once been on Chestnut had moved to South! I bought a monkey hat on the spot. Next, I want the frog, and then the rooster.

They are made/imported, incidentally, by Peruvian Trading Company. They're hard to track down online. I love my Monkey Hat.

Oh, and here's a picture from Monday that I also took with my Blackberry. Enjoy.

Village Productions

2008-08-02T21:18:00.006-04:00

Starting this September, I'll be teaching drama classes and private lessons at Village Productions in Pottstown (I know, I've already talked to them about possibly working on the website). The company have found themselves a permanent facility for the first time -- an old furniture warehouse is being transformed into the Tri-County Performing Arts Center, or TriPAC. I visited the site for the first time today, and I'm tremendously excited about it because (a) I'm renovation-nuts and (b) watching a theatre take shape like this is kind of cool.

Here's the main stage, which will be a black box. That's an orchestra loft above the stage, although the set-up will be very flexible so that the stage and audience risers can be configured any which way within the space.

On the second level are offices and three large classrooms, which can be combined by folding away acoustic wall panels to form a second performance area, shown here. (N.B. exposed brick wall at the right is being preserved as-is, aha!) I'll be teaching four classes a week in this space.

This is the fourth wall from the last shot, because metal studs and foil-backed insulation bales look sweet.

In the basement is a fairly extensive backstage area (green room, dressing rooms with sinks, two showers!) and costume/scenic workshops, as well as a couple of private studios where I'll be giving one-on-one coaching. This is a shot from the scenic workshop through exposed studs into the green room. You can see plumbing hookups for the green room kitchenette on the lower left, and on the right is the entrance to one of the dressing rooms.

So, yay. Everyone enroll your kids and your neighbors' kids in classes here, please.

The downside to having to visit the TriPAC today is that I missed seeing John Waters' live show in DE :(

Sub-Lyme news

2008-07-30T16:39:00.002-04:00

I received notification in the mail today that Barry the tick was found to be negative for Lyme disease bacteria! Still, screw him for biting me. Death to all ticks.

I have some nice news on the job front, too: seems I will be playing Ophelia in Philly next year. Stay tuned for more on that. I am incredibly excited but also a little pensive because the last time I played Ophelia, one of my dads died.

If you visit this blog regularly and possess the ability to read, you are aware that I have been experiencing some personal turbulence these past few months. Hopefully that is clearing up. There's a lot of hope going on. It's intense, but also kind of beautiful.

sky sky sky sky sky sky sky

2008-07-25T00:05:00.004-04:00

On another note: Explosions in the Sky ... Lights in the Sky ... Skyhooks ... the universe is evidently trying to tell me something! No idea what. Look up?

I feel really awful tonight, so that may well be it.

Paging theninhotline

2008-07-24T23:19:00.005-04:00

I have lately been getting multiple e-mails per day asking for this, so here it is.

Lights in the Sky (Sibelius file - readable for free with Scorch)
Lights in the Sky (PDF)

I have no idea how to access the Hotline anymore, since the interface changed and nobody has let me know what to do. So I guess I'll just point everyone who's been asking to this blog entry until someone uploads the files to the site and posts a news article.

[Edit] Situation with the Hotline resolved; sheet music for Lights in the Sky is now available here on Know the Score.

Another sketch

2008-07-23T18:45:00.002-04:00

Ain't got a model, so I have to keep drawing myself.

That I, one Snout by name, present a wall.

2008-07-22T23:42:00.003-04:00

FIRST -- BEFORE PICS. Here is the wall when we bought the house -- it's the wall in the back, through the arch, covered in plaster, awful wallpaper, and (shudder) baby blue trim.

Here is the wall after the plaster had been chipped away. As I said in my last post, it was like this for months.

Here is the wall now:

And with the dining set moved out of the way:

I still obviously need to prime and paint the trim, and I need baseboard and crown molding (which I can't put up until I've sorted out threading another wire into that light switch). But there it is. Got me some pride.

The Wall

2008-07-22T02:07:00.004-04:00

To help me get through what has been, to put it mildly, a trying time, I am focusing a lot of my energy on a wall. Months and months ago, Matt and I (with help from Chris and Stefania) exposed a brick wall in our house by painstakingly chiseling away hundreds of pounds of dilapidated horsehair plaster. The bricks were never meant to be seen -- they were chipped and broken and covered in plaster dust, and century-old mortar oozed all over them -- but an exposed brick wall was tantalizing. There's a beautiful exposed brick wall at National Mechanics, for instance. But gee, it seemed like such a lot of work. I often wondered if it would be easier to just paint over it, though that would ruin the effect of the natural brick. Months and months passed.

In the last week, though, I took it on as a kind of therapeutic project. And gee (again), were we ever right about it being a lot of work. I chipped all the extruded mortar away by hand. I painstakingly sanded each brick until it was clear of plaster and cement remnants, covering the interior of my house in dust and probably giving myself cancer in the process. I grouted until my fingers were raw from pushing slop between sharp brick edges. I brushed sealant on the cracked surfaces like a hermit painting delicate watercolors. It has been a labor of love and devotion. Every time I felt overwhelmed, I forced myself to get up and work on the wall. The nervous shake in my fingers and arms became the somewhat more bearable tremor of fatigue. Sometimes working on the wall took the place of eating and sleeping properly (like tonight).

The wall drove me crazy; the wall kept me sane. I told the wall secrets and listened for a response. I made bargains with the wall, convincing myself that it was a kind of talisman that would bring me luck. My mind filled with metaphors about stripping away facades and repairing the substance beneath until it was beautiful.

It's nearing completion, and I think it is going to be beautiful. Not perfect, and it won't solve any of my problems, but beautiful. Tomorrow, if the last of the grout dries properly, I'll finish sealing and put up the trim around the two doorways through it, and then I'll show you pictures. I'm afraid, though, the way I get when I'm nearing the end of a good book. What will I do when my friend the wall doesn't need me anymore?

The Tell-Tale Heart

2008-07-20T00:39:00.007-04:00

Cheesy sketches a la 1995/1996. Call it getting back to my roots, or something. Don't worry, my tongue is jammed with great gusto into my cheek.

Speaking of heart-rending (and at all not of really terrible art), wowwwwwww, everyone should come to see this play I'm reading. Especially anyone in the least bit familiar with my current situation, which is about seven people in the world, most of whom won't attend, but nevertheless. Not only is it a great play, in the tradition of great plays that leave you devastated and unable to speak afterward, but it speaks to my life and my family's life, past and present, in a frightening way. Sections of the revised script were actually uttered by me, in real life, about a week and a half ago. I almost want to start wearing a tinfoil hat to rehearsal in case the playwright is reading my mind. It's kind of like when a good friend of mine was in Spring Awakening. Although, on second thought, maybe nothing could be that intense. But it's bad. In a good way. It's like therapy every day. For pay!

O my lord, my lord, I have been so affrighted!

2008-07-18T13:43:00.006-04:00

It's the stuff of nightmares. Well, my nightmares. An hour ago in rehearsal, I was stroking my arm (weird habit during reading rehearsals), when my fingers brushed over something that felt like a piece of grit.

I brushed a little harder, but it didn't fall off.

I looked down. Was it a flea? It was about the size of a small flea. I grabbed it quickly between two fingernails, and was surprised to find I had to pull it out of my skin with a little "pop." I brought it close to my face to take a good look.

That right there is a deer tick, and the one I pulled out of my arm was the first I've seen in person. I am pretty sure he's a boy, and I am naming him Barry. I had the presence of mind to hold onto Barry after making sure he was dead, and I stuck him on the back of a price label peeled off a water bottle until I could secure him properly between strips of plastic during a suitable break in rehearsal.

Luckily for me (not so much for him), my good friend Clark has been going through Lyme disease hell for a couple of months, which has been very educational (and heartbreaking, but he's getting better). Following his instructions, on Monday I'm going to a Lyme literate doctor for a course of doxycycline, because I just called my usual doctor's office; they don't seem to have a clue, and it doesn't sound like it would be easy to convince them of the benefits of getting one. I also found a lab in Jersey who will test a tick for Lyme for $60 (again, after being told by my regular doctor's office that there was no way to test a tick for Lyme). I am sending Barry away to the lab today. I won't miss him, but I hope he gets there safely.

I hope I'm being overly cautious. The last thing I need is Lyme disease. Though, oddly enough, I kind of enjoyed the burst of activity this scare has brought; it's better than the self-pitying drunken moping I've been indulging in lately, or the bouts of constructive self-harm.

(Constructive self-harm is when you, for instance, work on your house with your hands so hard and for such long stretches that it still hurts to type twenty-four hours later. But the house! I made such progress!)

I really need that "illness" tag, don't I?

Explosions in the Sky

2008-07-17T23:23:00.005-04:00

Tonight I started listening to this band because I had Friday Night Lights playing in the background while I worked on the house all day, and I liked the music more than anything else. Sounds like Godspeed You! Black Emperor. It's the first music in weeks (months?) I've been able to listen to and ... enjoy may not be the write word. It gives me a kind of sweet pain and sometimes makes my arms break out in hard gooseflesh.

Ten minutes ago, I found their MySpace profile, and played the first track "Yasmin the Light." As the climax approached, I heard a loud crack, and I glanced out the window beside me just in time to see a burst of green and purple in the sky. The chances of a leftover firework from July 4th being ignited at the right time and in the right place, with me seated at the right angle, combined with the fact of the band's name and the nature of their music, had me in tears with completely indescribable emotion. Sometimes I don't know quite what the universe is doing with me, but I think it's giving me a pretty wild ride.

Why does Philly smell so much of piss?

2008-07-16T19:57:00.002-04:00

Heartburn, Ironically* -- or, Am I Having a Midlife Crisis at Age 28?

2008-07-15T22:03:00.008-04:00

Last week, I learned that if I am juuuust stressed enough, I get some crazy digestion problems which involve having no appetite, throwing up half my meals when I force myself to eat, and getting reflux after eating the other half. I've never had that happen before, so I suppose I was more stressed than I've ever been. It certainly felt so. Alternatively, I'm old and don't deal with stress as well as I used to.

I should probably have a tag 'illness' for this blog, because it seems a good proportion of my posts are about medical problems; I recall a stretch a couple of years ago when I mostly discussed the terrorism committed by my urinary tract, which the rest of my body views with Republican-like paranoia to this day. I can't bring myself to create the label, however, because I already feel I'm turning into an old woman.

On the phone this week, my mother informed me matter-of-factly that I am now middle-aged, since I might as well be thirty.

She also received my new headshot in the mail, and her only comment? "You're getting old."
"But do you like the picture?" I pressed, offended hysteria rising like the bile in my acid-etched esophagus.
"Weeell, I guess you look pretty, but you're old. There are so many lines around your eyes. I took it to the tenant in the front flat, and he said, 'She's aging. It's natural.'"

I sent her a spiteful e-mail afterward asking (sarcastically) if she would send me money for plastic surgery so I don't disappoint her in future photographs. I guess I should call her to kiss and make up sometime tonight.

The headshot in question can currently be viewed on my Facebook and MySpace profiles, in case you're curious.

*The irony is that my heartburn is caused by affairs of the heart -- and neither of these ailments has anything to do with the cardiac organ. Suck it, Alanis Morrisette.

Soooo ...

2008-07-13T23:08:00.007-04:00

Life is more complicated than anyone can ever imagine. Enough said about that.

In not-really-life related news: I am excited to be starting work at PlayPenn tomorrow -- I have two weeks of rehearsal for a staged reading of a new play, Another Man's Son. I will be playing Lucine, who is an Armenian, and I will probably have to whip out an American accent. Yes, that's American, not Armenian, which is a relief, but I still think it looks funny written out.

I've been teaching week-long theatre camps, and while they are ludicrously satisfying (personally, not financially), they are also incredibly exhausting. Last week I had to look after twenty campers, nineteen of whom were between the ages of 5 and 8, from nine till four every day without a break -- I sit with them and keep them entertained through lunch as well. There were tears every single day from at least one of the campers, and quite often there were tears from me as soon as I stepped through my front door again. But they did put on a lovely show at the end of it, and even though I feel like I spent half my time disciplining them, they were super-affectionate. The week before, I taught Hamlet to a class of five kids aged seven through eleven, culminating in a performance of the final fight. Srsly. (Most bizarre part: the seven-year-old understood the play better than anyone.) I have two more camps to teach; the last is a musical theatre camp for which I am a little nervous because I don't really have a clue.

The next two weeks are going to be tough for reasons I'm (again) not going to go into. Uh, into which I'm not going to go. Uh. I don't really want to go into the reasons. Suffice to say that I'm going to try focusing on reading, writing, and ... cello-ing in my spare time, which is somehow simultaneously too scarce and not scarce enough. Wish me luck.

joga

2008-07-11T07:50:00.001-04:00

4am crazy

2008-07-10T04:44:00.009-04:00

I refused point blank to have these words said at my wedding because (a) how entirely unoriginal, and (b) it's a Bible quote, and God knows I'm not big on the Bible. But, God help me, I just woke up singing a hymn I remember from primary school based on 1 Corinthians 13. I know: cue mental hives. Not least because my mother sometimes used to wake up singing hymns in the middle of the night right before it was time to put her in the car and pack her off to hospital.

Love is patient and kind,
Love is not jealous or proud,
Never selfish or rude,
Won't demand its own way,
Love will never end.

Love does not take offense
and keeps no score of misdeeds ...

I am sure these are the lyrics. I even remember the chord changes with some degree of accuracy (requires Sibelius Scorch).

Then I searched all over the internet to find the exact wording for the end of the second verse, and the internet could not provide. I'm not sure how that's even possible.

Anyway, the point is, maybe I should have. But I don't think there's anything wrong with aspiration (non-pulmonary).

Metropolis: Key scenes from the famous movie rediscovered

Tom Waits on his cherished albums of all time

I speak like Cate Blanchett

2008-06-14T07:23:00.003-04:00

I've been in the US a while now, and the incidence of accent foibles has decreased over time, but every now and then I still have a good one.

Yesterday I auditioned for a Shakespeare show at a theater where I've never worked. I was late, as usual, but they were running behind anyway, so there wasn't much chitchat before I began. I ran through the first side and stopped for comment. The director and his assistant both gave me a funny look.

"Um ... you ... You've obviously done a lot of vocal work. But you're using RP."

I stared at them blankly wondering if RP was some crazy American vocal technique.

"Received Pronunciation. Can you do it in your normal accent?"

My god. My god! They thought I was one of those annoying wanker Americans who pretend they're British when they do Shakespeare. I hate those actors; I couldn't believe they assumed I was one of them! I wanted to run out of the room screaming and take a shower.

"I'm Australian." I said it slowly in an effort to hide my creeping outrage.

Blank stare again, this time from both of them.

"This IS my normal accent."

"You're Australian?"

"Yes, but I don't sound like Steve Irwin. I sound more like Cate Blanchett." I couldn't believe I was having this conversation.

"Oh, uh, well, can you just sound less ... polished? Just be yourself."

So I faked having a lazy Australian accent for Shakespeare. I should have just done it in an American accent. Or, as Sean suggested when he heard the story, I should have gone balls to the wall and done the entire thing sounding exactly like Paul Hogan.

Note to self: always, always find a way to slip my Australian heritage into pre-audition chitchat, no matter how short or clumsy. "It's hot today, isn't it? Oh, but not so hot as it is back home in the outback with kangaroos and shrimp on the barbie. I said as much to my mate Judy Davis when I phoned home to the Land Down Under last weekend." Something like that.