Enough with the eulogies! Enough.
A few things you should know:
1. Despite the cool new headlight and blinking red rear light I brought back, I have given up trying to ride my bicycle to and from campus until the weather proves it can act like a gentleman. I established this much when the below freezing temperatures contracted the metal in my bike lock, rendering my key useless until I warmed the lock with my breath, after which I coasted on to South Shore Drive and realized that my gears weren’t functioning. So, no more displays of bravado. I’m trudging through a mile and a half of slush like a mere mortal, and when I’m feeling like a sucker, waiting 20 minutes for a bus.
2. Kristen knitted me a winter hat, and I love it like it’s our baby.
That’s the context for my winter quarter.
So I’m taking this History and Theory of Drama class taught by two professors, one of whom is the founder of Court Theater, and the second is a renowned Shakespeare scholar and a general benefactor of University Theater. And in this class, people are just falling over themselves trying to impress these guys. At first I thought it was ridiculous, but then I was honest with myself and realized that I’ve been doing the exact same thing, projecting my tried-and-true image of “mysterious and pensive onlooker” in the hopes that someone would think I had something really important to say but was gracious enough not to give it away. But by the time that dawned on me (on Friday), I discovered that 3 weeks had passed and I hadn’t uttered a word in discussion yet. More than that, I found that I had nothing intelligent to offer on Ibsen or Strindberg or Chekhov. Actually, I had something really smashing to say about Chekhov, and I spent two whole class periods refining the wording in my head, and by the time I was ready, we moved to Oscar Wilde. I’m becoming self-conscious of my own self-consciousness, which should be a state of mind where the two would cancel each other out, or so you would think. So you would think.
I’m also taking a fiction class taught by a guy who reminds me very much of Don Allen in the way that he delivers the punchline of a joke by craning his neck towards the class and shouting it. This man also gave me the first really bad grade I’ve ever received on a paper, English or otherwise. The paper was on a Raymond Carver story, the point of which I must have missed beautifully. I got a C+. A day later, I still shudder typing it. He wrote, “you don’t really analyze details consistently.” I think that’s the most helpful thing anyone’s ever expressed to me. I don’t really feel that right now, but I believe it. In fact, I’m a little bit stimulated by this bad grade. That doesn’t mean it feels very good. It’s like the stimulation a kid gets after he sticks a fork in the electric socket— it doesn’t feel great, but you can already tell he’s learning.
So, in my first few weeks back, I’m already questioning a) if I really have anything intelligent to say and b) if I am even intelligent enough to say it.
After school, I’m doing tons of sketch writing for improv. Which, when I say that to people, sounds so cool to my ears. But in practice, it’s hard. And the thing about having to be funny every night for 3 straight hours is, eventually, that line between funny and not funny starts to blur. Last weekend I wrote what I thought was the most hilarious scene, it was about about Neils Bohr hitting on women in a bar, and I woke up the next morning to find that it read like a bad sex change operation. But outnumbering those are the moments of inspiration. During the week we’re making these trips to IO and Second City, which is like visiting a temple, but a temple with old photos of Eugene Levy and Gilda Radner on the wall, and it’s so exhilarating to be there, much less see a "best of" 45 years of Second City show. It makes you want to go home and bang the shit out of your word processor all night.
Still, rehearsal eats up the time, and so does work and class, and so ROTK:EE has gone neglected as has I Am Charlotte Simmons, which doesn’t deserve the kind of loyalty I’m giving to it. Worse, though, I’m not keeping up with friends and family, which is something I’d been so determined to keep up with this quarter. I so wanted to bring Alpharetta back to school with me, but it’s like stretching a rubber band tied to a post: you can make it reach as far as you want, but it’s hard to hold on to if you’ve got class and work and rehearsal, and meals. I’d like to say I’ve been devoting the time I gained from not blogging to phone calls and e-mails, but that just hasn’t been the case.
Anyway, I’ll be back soon. Hi-five for ‘05.
A few things you should know:
1. Despite the cool new headlight and blinking red rear light I brought back, I have given up trying to ride my bicycle to and from campus until the weather proves it can act like a gentleman. I established this much when the below freezing temperatures contracted the metal in my bike lock, rendering my key useless until I warmed the lock with my breath, after which I coasted on to South Shore Drive and realized that my gears weren’t functioning. So, no more displays of bravado. I’m trudging through a mile and a half of slush like a mere mortal, and when I’m feeling like a sucker, waiting 20 minutes for a bus.
2. Kristen knitted me a winter hat, and I love it like it’s our baby.
That’s the context for my winter quarter.
So I’m taking this History and Theory of Drama class taught by two professors, one of whom is the founder of Court Theater, and the second is a renowned Shakespeare scholar and a general benefactor of University Theater. And in this class, people are just falling over themselves trying to impress these guys. At first I thought it was ridiculous, but then I was honest with myself and realized that I’ve been doing the exact same thing, projecting my tried-and-true image of “mysterious and pensive onlooker” in the hopes that someone would think I had something really important to say but was gracious enough not to give it away. But by the time that dawned on me (on Friday), I discovered that 3 weeks had passed and I hadn’t uttered a word in discussion yet. More than that, I found that I had nothing intelligent to offer on Ibsen or Strindberg or Chekhov. Actually, I had something really smashing to say about Chekhov, and I spent two whole class periods refining the wording in my head, and by the time I was ready, we moved to Oscar Wilde. I’m becoming self-conscious of my own self-consciousness, which should be a state of mind where the two would cancel each other out, or so you would think. So you would think.
I’m also taking a fiction class taught by a guy who reminds me very much of Don Allen in the way that he delivers the punchline of a joke by craning his neck towards the class and shouting it. This man also gave me the first really bad grade I’ve ever received on a paper, English or otherwise. The paper was on a Raymond Carver story, the point of which I must have missed beautifully. I got a C+. A day later, I still shudder typing it. He wrote, “you don’t really analyze details consistently.” I think that’s the most helpful thing anyone’s ever expressed to me. I don’t really feel that right now, but I believe it. In fact, I’m a little bit stimulated by this bad grade. That doesn’t mean it feels very good. It’s like the stimulation a kid gets after he sticks a fork in the electric socket— it doesn’t feel great, but you can already tell he’s learning.
So, in my first few weeks back, I’m already questioning a) if I really have anything intelligent to say and b) if I am even intelligent enough to say it.
After school, I’m doing tons of sketch writing for improv. Which, when I say that to people, sounds so cool to my ears. But in practice, it’s hard. And the thing about having to be funny every night for 3 straight hours is, eventually, that line between funny and not funny starts to blur. Last weekend I wrote what I thought was the most hilarious scene, it was about about Neils Bohr hitting on women in a bar, and I woke up the next morning to find that it read like a bad sex change operation. But outnumbering those are the moments of inspiration. During the week we’re making these trips to IO and Second City, which is like visiting a temple, but a temple with old photos of Eugene Levy and Gilda Radner on the wall, and it’s so exhilarating to be there, much less see a "best of" 45 years of Second City show. It makes you want to go home and bang the shit out of your word processor all night.
Still, rehearsal eats up the time, and so does work and class, and so ROTK:EE has gone neglected as has I Am Charlotte Simmons, which doesn’t deserve the kind of loyalty I’m giving to it. Worse, though, I’m not keeping up with friends and family, which is something I’d been so determined to keep up with this quarter. I so wanted to bring Alpharetta back to school with me, but it’s like stretching a rubber band tied to a post: you can make it reach as far as you want, but it’s hard to hold on to if you’ve got class and work and rehearsal, and meals. I’d like to say I’ve been devoting the time I gained from not blogging to phone calls and e-mails, but that just hasn’t been the case.
Anyway, I’ll be back soon. Hi-five for ‘05.
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