What are we to do?

Gentle sisters, say
Propriety we know
Says we ought to stay.
While sympathy exclaims
Free them from your tethers
Play at other games...
Leave them here together.

Came from seeing Once on This Island at Hudson tonight - well done, esp. the first act. Some great choreography that I want to steal, very bright and colorful, terrific singing. Much fun gadding about with Mum afterwards (she wanted to see the show after producing this one...ah, how I convert them one by one to the luan and the lekolight), and gadding about with R. who surprisingly showed up. Good insights - good evening.

But now what am I to do with the upcoming Winter? I find that Earnest, as much as I love the play, isn't really...clicking for me after all. I carn't do Christmas Carol again - I'd be miserable at it and that would be conveyed to the cast and then my energy would be down for Hamlet and that would be terrible. I want next year to go out with a bang (not a whimper - ambitious much? Nah). So, what am I to do? Gentle sister, say? It looks like I'll probably have three guys at least and a ton of girls - I simply haven't the heart to make cuts after all. So what show? A Greek tragedy? Except that I'll be doing Hamlet and you can't get too much more quintessential tragic than that. Tartuffe? Except that it doesn't have enough ROLES. Not Our Town - too long, too much, and I'd have no love for the thing. I come back to Wallace's Will or my version of Nutcracker - except do I want to write/adapt something so soon again? (Can I? Will it drive me nuts?) I do want to do a Passion at the end of next year (Easter is late enough next year to make it feasible) - to sort of bring things full circle. I shudder at the thought of doing a Nativity - not at the Nativity itself, more that I can't see my way to get creatively inside it at the moment and I think it would shut down my bodily processes at that point of the year, what with the talent show and the winter show and grades being due and quarterlies and tons of days off that make teaching difficult and.... Hwell.

I was about to say that all this is moot, except that it isn't. I've the time now, the leisure now (the energy now) to set things in place for next year so that I can have a real summer off. Better to do it now, before this particular obsession fades.... (Ha - fade? OCD much?) I digress, I regress, I distress. (Vini, vici, visa.)

Truly, I am very glad of this evening. As always, God is good. Ad majorem Dei gloriam! Amen! Alleluia!

Mood: Floating
Music: Mental "Waiting for Life to Begin"
Latest Ambition: I really want to do an actual stage version that more closely follows Anderson's original "Little Mermaid" complete with the self-sacrificial/Purgatorial ending. HA!
Redux Thought: Insta-love. Bah.
Continuation of Thought: (Since blogger's being weird) - Yeah, so our bedroom scene.... Yes.

OK, real quick

These, from the "Which Incredibles Character Are You" are simply hilarious! How does one pick between them?

I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every minute of it.

Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.

You are depriving some poor village of its idiot!

All that glitters has a high refractive index.

Keep honking. I'm reloading.

Better living through denial.

Too many freaks...not enough circuses.

Earn cash in your spare time. Blackmail friends.

What is a free gift? Aren't all gifts free?

Going the speed of light is bad for your age.

Chaos. Panic. Disorder. My work here is done.

Few women admit their age. Few men act theirs.

Friends help you move. Real friends help you move bodies.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say will be misquoted and used against you.

A cubicle is a padded cell without a door.

All generalizations are false. Including this one.

I got Dash AND Violet...I wanted Edna. Ah, the vagaries of life!

The Usual Suspects: Regard below, mes cheres!

Oh What a Glorious Day!

Weather is truly a remarkable phenomenon: rain for the past two days and Emily's mmmmmmmmmmmiserabububububuuble!; sunshine today and everything's roses and champagne and fuzzy bunny slippers. Curious, non?

The saviour of yesterday was Julie and trips to Pizzeria Uno and A.C.Moore and fun with camera phones which, alas, failed entirely to capture the brilliant rainbow over Rte. 9. Songs of yesterday included: "On My Own," "We Learned the Sea," "The Impossible Dream," and "Haunted" - the last of which resonated in whole new ways. In the obscurity column: money is evil. And I understand better why friendship was long considered the greatest of the human loves, over eros. Hrumph. Anywho....

Purchased a copy of The Importance of Being Earnest tonight, with the long-lost Grimsby (?) scene, that curiously made it into the movie. I'm dubious about Earnest. Thoughts (shower thoughts) are percolating, balances weighing. (In related news: I think I will audition for The Matchmaker with the Savoyards - hah!) Kvetched after chorus (pseudo-chorus for me - all I have to do is bang out the songs on the piano - fabuloso) with Ch., and spoke at length re: Hamlet. As daunted as I am by the thought of doing the Bard's best, I've talked off one too many ears about it to not make a first go at it as some sort of reparation. And...a thought hit me as I put on Evanescence just now....

PROJECTORS!!! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES! Multimedia Hamlet! Bwahahahhahahahahhahahahah! Oh the schoene oh the schoene oh the schoene liptenstein? (Can't recall how it actually goes.) Ah, that's it - schnitzelbank. Hrm - not much better. (Things must be better - randominity has returned.)

In further news for no one in particular but myself, The Piano (it really needs a name - I shall have to look into it) has been installed into my classroom. Oh joy! I had much fun playing it today - although I fear me I'll have to lock it up on weekends lest nasty CCD kids come in and *shudder* touch it. Possessive little, are we?

Am in a write-y mood. Am in a very free mood. Am cut free at beginning of new semester. Am giving mini-philosophy course to Juniors - am very happy about that. Am inexpressibly grateful to God for today, esp. after such a miserable yesterday. Shame about the public nature of said blog. (Oh the trivialities!)

Life is good. Life is very, very good.

Mood: Contented - a nice place to be
Music: The "Paper Flowers" one on Evenescence's first CD
Thought: Wallace's Will or the Gawain/Ceilyn/Unicorn story, or a stab at the one from the Christmas Carol cast party mental snapshot? (Need a name for that one, period!) Alas, left Gosford Park CD at school (nearly wrote "home" again - no, no, Emily) which rather makes writing Wallace's Will to a proper soundtrack a conundrum; plenty of Celtic music lying about, though. I wonder if Evenescence could inspire Wallace's Will-y thoughts, despite its utter lack of End-of-Empire sound?
Looking Forward to: The third Star Wars movie and, yes, HP6. I'm going through my Pratchett again to give myself something to read. Ran across a rather interesting-looking Victorianaesque book in the YA section of Borders, but a quick perusal of its grammar persuaded me that the author only had a good idea, not execution. I shake my fist at the world in general for not providing me with an endless supply of entertainment. (And then I recall my impromptu lecture on the nature of redemptive suffering to first period Freshmen this morning and I shame-facedly hide my fist again.)

It's so frustrating

To be all ready to edit but to be still waiting on reverse angles and long shots. And where are my extreme close-ups!?!??!?! Augh! A bit concerned. It'll be fine - it always is but.... Anywho, hardly a garganutan problem in the face of what's really important in America at the moment. T-minus-40-minutes until one prepares onself for tonight's vigil, at which one is doing the first reading (Creation - whoopee). But y'know what? I'm thinking it's time for "I trust I make myself obscure." (What is that from? Shakespeare? Wilde? Some random sitcom?)

I feel rather like some Biblical parable figure - or perhaps a Pinnochio'd Guipetto (sp?) - or perhaps simply like the Beast in Beauty and the in the final moments when everyone's coming at the castle with flaming torches. What a distance from Salome - no more reserve, fear, aloof expressions - and yet, in the final summation, to feel, to become, to cherish, to be in fact human.... I've always known I ought to strive for that: that estrangement was not good, nor even required - yet when at last I appear to achieve the pinnacle of Dante's Purgatorio, it's all stripped from me again. It's a perpetual Jobian cycle - the myth of Sisyphus without the absurdist trappings. And yet, ought I be surprised? I suppose I had counted on missing the job (sans capital J); I hadn't known I'd miss the people. How curious, then - I find I almost detest regarding the final act (no help either that none can be blamed for its origin but myself, hence my own view is hardly objective). Where for other projects I play them on repeat - this one, I almost wish to banish from my sight - merely so that I might not truly purge myself, perhaps? Or to sever with no reserve? I am a monstrous well of self-reflection. And all this leads to naught.

In plainer terms, I find that I don't know how to answer when Joe (or more usually Jane) Schmoe approaches me and asks with all sincerity, "Oh! So you must be relieved it's over, then?" Relieved? Relieved? I suppose if there is any relief it lies in the fact that it occurred - not that it ended. Nor is it really relief, as though it had been a burden I ought not have carried, or that I wish had belonged to another. Relief is so without the tumult of conflicting emotions which are the usual sparring heirs of any production that I cannot hear the word uttered so casually from the casual and unknowing lip but find myself in utter bafflement. Relief?!?!?! Ask me, when I return from a trip to Austria or to England or to some other wonder-land whether I am relieved to have returned. Or ask the mother if she is relieved to have borne and reared and buried a child. There are a thousand other pangs and elations of the heart that tepid relief can find no way within. No, there is no relief - although there is sorrow and joy and pride and confusion and fear and excitement and determination and love and frustration and happiness and a thousand other extremities of the being clamoring within my fragile breast. I somedays feel - indeed, feel - when I have felt too much and let but a fraction of it show which makes the feeling more - I feel as though as insane as each project drives me, as well it's the only thing that holds me together. Pressure, tension, in the architectural sense. But now, for the first time since, honestly, Brigadoon (which began November 2001) I have an honest-to-goodness break - and I find that the loneliest thing of all. It'll take some readjusting to - I can't expect the habits of several years to dissipate in a mere week, much less of fortnight, perhaps the entirety of these five months. But just as I learned to cherish and to be, particularly on this last show, particularly in this particularly trying year - so I suppose I've got to relearn to be without the definition of the procenium arch, the dimmed lights, the masonite and velveteen.

Oh, I am a fool. But, so methinks, we all are.

Music: None - the heater working overtime, my fingers skitter on the black keyboard
Mood: Pensive. Oh, Lord, help me really focus on You this evening, and not my own foolishness! Amen!
Thought: Indecisive pronouns and jumbled antecedents are our friends!

Good Friday

For the sake of His sorrowful passion,
Have mercy on us and on the whole world.

Lord, have mercy;
Christ, have mercy;
Lord, have mercy.

Amen.

Finis

Joyeux Palm Sunday

I ought to be in bed - silly me - but I'm blogging. Just for a second. In order to say...what? That my kids are the best - that I love the piano - that I can't wait to actually SEE the show tomorrow - that...yes, that I wish there were even more people seeing this show, the kids deserve the best - that I'm happy and yet still numbish - that life is good, so very very good, and that the score just won't quit my head. Ah ca. And that watching from the wings is a *very weird* experience.

Life is good.

Fa la.

Mood: Sleepy - yet, not quite
Music: "Do Not Turn From Me" on mental jukebox
Curiosity is: Going to the 99 tonight.
Who knows: What the future holds.... Huh.

Regard me: I expire

Well...we have a show. And it's dem' fyine.

Mood: Ought to be more sleepy
Music: Darling Spanish Rose on repeat in the brain, along with various FULL orchestrations of various songs and song bits.
Thought: Thought? What thought? The play's been going on my brain morning, night and noon (which prompts the thought that proves the rule, why do we put NOON at the end of that? I mean, it's out of order...but it does sound better. Weird).
Submission is: No plays for Emily this summer. Sigh. Not even to be in. Sigh. But familial units are right, and so I'll keep my sighs to myself.
FWAH is: King of Fools! FWAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

(Why IS all the rum gone?) Anywho, onto brief randominity....

The durn perfectionist in me is making it very difficult to write up the silly things I need to write up for Mom for the program for KOF. Augh augh! Out out, durn perfectionist! Dangling prepositions and passive sentences be darned to heck! Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh. (Regard me: I expire!)

In good news - no, I amend, great news - I slept for (drumroll please) 16 3/4 hours! I basically came home from school yesterday, having cancelled all music classes until April (due to play, Easter, and the need to feel my brain again), and literally collapsed on my bed around about 3:30 PM and didn't wake up until sometime around 9ish this morning. Didn't bother setting the alarm; didn't bother asking for a wake-up calls - just slept. Yup. Guess it needed doing.

Also in good news, Jules was let out of work early today (due to the @*&^$ snow), and so had wunderschoene words of advice and comfort. Her paintings are looking really good and I'm particularly impressed with: a) her eye for vibrant color, b) her mix of reality and fantasy, and c) her ability to give verbal exigesis on each painting. Wow. Fwah. Jules is amazing.

Also also wik in good news (I law a loveli telefone system...no), I wrastled that doggone Sibelius disc to work so now I have the uber-musik-writer sur mon computer! Voila! Je suis la fille de mon pere qui est tres manifique avec les telecommunications! Mmmmwah! L'hacker terrible - c'est moi!

Am still praying for a drummer. God, I have no idea how You're going to pull this one off.

And sometimes it gets later, so I'll just finish up with this plug:

Come see King of Fools
The New Musical Comedy (by me)
Presented by Hudson Catholic High School
At Marlborough Middle School
Fri-Sat. March 18-19 at 7 PM
Sun. March 20 at 2 PM
Call HCH for more details or
Visit HCH Drama's (in process) site!



Mood: Anxious
Music: Flannel Collage, but possibly something else less existential and more musical-y in a minute
Random Pre-Show Dream: So I dreamt I was meeting with this woman for finances for the show when it became clear to me that everyone in the area thought I was putting on Kiss Me, Kate, when I was distraught because we weren't putting that on, we were putting on Taming of the Shrew! Yeah, good one when one's pre-show anxiety dreams aren't about the show.... ;P
Goodness is: Being reminded to cherish this week.

Pass the marshmallow

I'm gonna collapse.

Snow cancelled rehearsal. Which is a bummer because we're so close to performance. But which is a blessing because now we get to rejeuvenate. So, it's all in God's hands. And I'm attempting not to panic overmuch re: music and time and lack thereof of both. And vanilla scented bubble baths are from God (even if we keep drifting off to sleep), and long talks with Ch. about Irish music are great because they're not about theatre whatsoever, and looks like IOBE and H. might be a go for next year, which prompts the thought: H! *shudder* ...oh, no... what am I thinking of?!??!?! Or somesuch.

Monosyllabic lingual skills are creeping near again. Countdown: T-minus-ten days, six rehearsals and counting.

Mood: Lethargic
Music: None at the moment, other than various mechanical buzzings
Trepidations: Many and varied
Thoughts: What will this day be like? I wonder.
What will my future be? I wonder.
It could be so exciting...to be out in the world to be free!
My heart should be wildly rejoicing....
Oh what's the matter with me?

I've always longed for adventure...
To do the things I've never dared!
Now here I'm facing adventure...
...then why am I so scared?

A captain with seven children -
What's so fearsome about that!
Oh! I must stop these doubts, all these worries -
If I don't I just know I'll turn back!
I must dream of the thing I am seeking:
I am seeking the courage I lack.

The courage to serve them with reliance
Show my mistakes without defiance
Show them I'm worthy
And while I show them
I'LL SHOW ME SO....

Let them bring on all their troubles!
I'll do better than my best!
I have confidence, they'll put me to the test!
But I'll make them see, I have confidence in me!

Somehow I will impress them...
I will be firm, but kind...
And all those children!
(Heaven bless them.)
They will look up to me -
AND MIND ME!

With each step I am more certain
Everything will turn out fine -
I have confidence the world can be all mine
They'll have to agree I have confidence in me!

Strength doesn't lie in numbers;
Strength doesn't lie in wealth;
Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers -
When you wake up...
WAKE UP! It's healthy!

All I do I put my trust in,
All I love becomes my own,
I have confidence in confidence alone...

...oh...help...

...I have confidence in confidence a-LONE!
Besides which you see
I have confidence in me!

Scratch that bit about "Music: None" - hah!

Let's Face the Music
And daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaance!

Check out the Hudson Catholic Drama Page, newly updated (although hardly completed), with quite a few video clips sprinkled about. (Just double checked video clips - not looking right. Gaaaaaaaaaaah! Will check out tomorrow.) Right - back to the big editing thingy. So. Tired.

Mood: Achey
Music: Mental "Let's Face the Music"
Thought: Oddish day, eh? Oh, Heavens, what's that quote about stress again? And the Bigger Than the Sky trailer is good solely for its final three lines, something akin to:

Director: (to lead actor who is lying, stressed out, in what appears to be a hospital bed) Look, you need to make a decision; you need to tell me whether you can go on tonight as Cyrano or not. Tell me now.

Lead Actor: (after a moment's hesitation to cogitate and gulp) I...I can't do it.

Director: (looking at the Lead for a moment, before grabbing him and shouting) YES YOU CAN!

The rest of it looks ehish, but that moment...funny ouch.

The king has given up his crown

The king is living with the poor and lowly
The king has thrown his scepter down
And now he wields his fading power only
For one lady
And their bastard child....

(...I've the Quintet in my head, fa la...) Sooooooooo (((clapping hands))) updates!

The Quintet is in my head. This is a definite improvement over having various bits of The Mikado in my head (the moreso because I don't really know the lyrics and so only get four to eight measures at a time stuck. Le sigh).

I have joined the ranks of the cellphoned. Good grief. But it is a cool phone and a camera phone and that is important because....

*drumroll please* I'M GOING TO IRELAND THIS SUMMER!!! Oh, happy day! Unmodified rapture! Glory glory halleluja! I'm not quite sure when and I'll need to save up but the washing machine of my mother has spoken (and I have the fish of my brother Raoul) and Ayah am gowin', chile'! Oh, exuberance unbounded! Grass and sheep and cliffs and water and castles and sweaters and penny whistles here I come! And I fully intend to stop off in Stratford-upon-Avon and see whatever show Sam West is in. Provided he is in a show. Which I hope he is. So there. Oh, glee and gaity and accents to make one swoon. SNERK! POMF! FWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Play coming along well. Starting runs of acts/show tomorrow. We'll see how we're doing then. And then all runs as of next week. And then runs the following week for tech. And then we shake nervously. And then we collapse. And then it all ends happily and I wander around like a zombie until I remember I'm going to Ireland.

Yeaaaaaaaaaaah...so current thought is The Importance of Being Ernest set in the 20's and Hamlet set in modern punk/emo/corroded steel land. Bwahahhahah. May not end up doing that, but that's the current (aka as of this evening) thought. We'll see how we are in an actual year's time. Oh, but Wilde! Shakespeare! (Wilde Shakespeare? Hrm.)

Did I mention I'm going to Ireland this summer? Snerk.

A consideration was brought up re: the age appropriateness of the show (KOF). I hadn't thought about it before, but yes, it is rather a PG-rated show. I don't think it's quite PG13 - but I'd forgotten the whole killing Vianne thing and then the haunting thing and there are about three strong words in the piece. Huh.

Finished watching Season Two of Buffy just now. Very good episodes - although I can't quite see how they get from Season Two to the shenanigans of Season Six. It looks to me as though they rather lost their way. But very good ending of Season Two. So there one is.

Life is good. Life is very, very good. Even when it's stressful and worrisome and one gets in one's own way...life is good. Amen.

Mood: Warm
Music: You know your duty (Can you live your life in lies)
You have your duty (For when does your disguise)
You'll do your duty (Become)
Come what may (Your face?)
Thought: Though the way is lonely (When the blood is on your hands)
And conscience holds me (When your word is our command)
I'll know peace only (For peace throughout the land)
When I do what I must do (Demands a great price/Do what you must do)....