Staying Alive (So Far)

I was hoping to post something, anything noteworthy to reassure (?) you all that I haven't died yet, however, nothing much has happened. We are both still sick. I have missed church two weeks in a row and today was my first attempt at going back to work since the Saturday before Easter... and I am paying for the effort dearly. I have not had to go back to the hospital, but this past Friday was the first day I didn't need my rescue inhaler at least once. We are both still coughing quite a bit.

 

The only thing that has really happened is on Saturday a friend and I drove to the nearest city to wait in line for Record Store Day -- my first ever. I wasn't really interested in any of the official RSD releases, but I'm always down for the opportunity to go to a record store. We had planned this months in advance, and it turned out to be my first real excursion since my asthma attack on the 7th.

 

I left with four vinyl albums and nine CDs (plus a tenth CD that my brother wanted). None of it was stuff I had been looking for for decades or anything, but I knocked a couple of songs off my iTunes wishlist and got some 'starter' albums for the Beach Boys and the Supremes (both artists I have long been interested in learning more about but never pursued). I also added to my late '90s/early 2000s dancepop collection.

 

Also on the music front, I've also lately discovered the wonders of the Internet Archive and been using it to find new music to love. I found some '80s/'90s Japanese jazz fusion and a treasure trove of Christian alternative and rock albums that have been on my wish list for DECADES but remain elusive even on Discogs.

 

I've been going through the to-listen pile as well. Even though my music habit slowed a LOT during the years I worked in fast food, apparently I managed to accumulate a few titles from the local thrift store that went straight into the box with the other records and never actually got played (some of them were still in the original shopping bags with the receipts). So far I've imported heavy hitters like Servant's Light Maneuvers (can't believe I've been sleeping on this album for five years -- this one was an immediate favourite), Paul Clark's Aim For The Heart (which is perfect for my recent love of early '90s jazz and weather channel vapourwave), Leon Patillo's Dance Children Dance, and David Edward's Get The Picture from this 'source.'

 

I haven't 'synced up' my computers yet with all the new music, but my guess is I'm closing in on the 6800-song mark.

What I mean by 'synced up:' I import CDs and vinyl directly onto the MacBook Pro, which has a CD drive and Audacity but is too old for internet; and I download new iTunes Store/Bandcamp purchases onto the MacBook Air, then use an external drive to manually shuttle music and album artwork between the two.

 

I have a Smart Playlist on each computer called 'Updates,' and it's set to include all songs added after a certain date. Whenever I want to 'sync up' my music library, I start by going through that playlist on one of the computers and adding those tracks to the external drive. Then I go to the other computer and copy over the tracks from the first computer, then copy new tracks from the second computer onto the external drive using the playlist. Then I go back to the first computer and add the new tracks from the second one, referencing the Update playlists on each computer to ensure I've got all the tracks. Once I've got all the new tracks on both computers, I change the date on both Update playlists to that date, so all new music added after that goes on the playlists until I start the process over again.

 

It's a bit complicated and time-consuming, but to me it is absolutely worth it to keep things organized and to ensure that all my music is readily available on both my main devices. Mirroring my music library in this way also ensures that 1. I have downloaded copies of all my music, they're not just on some cloud somewhere where they could be deleted at any moment, and 2. I have a full, up-to-date backup of my music library in three places: the Pro, the Air, and the external drive itself. I have heard far too many horror stories of people losing decades of rare music to drive failure.

 

I've also been reading quite a bit, since my lungs are too easily exhausted to do much else. I dug back through my childhood and read some old obscure mysteries that I used to borrow from the library all the time as a kid. It's been a very enjoyable experience so far.

 

I don't know how to wrap up this post. My ear is killing me and so is my throat. No amount of tea is helping. I'm just so tired of being sick. But so far I am breathing okay.

One Month Of Vacation

Today marks one month since the day we drove away from our decrepit old apartment in the desert and did not come back.

 

I drove past it a few days ago. There were no Christmas lights on the balcony, for the first time in five years... I have always made sure to put up at least one strand of Christmas lights. And they are up... just not at the blue apartment.

 

It still feels like we're on vacation in a beautiful little guest house, with our Christmas tree and my husband's streaming setup and my grandma's rocking chair and my husband's mead-making station and all my plants on their stand. It still feels like one day we'll wake up and we'll have to leave and go back 'home' to the desert apartment with the spiders and the mice and the four-storey hike one-way to the laundry room and the cinderblock walls with no storage that pressed in around us.

I cried when we left... I was shocked at that. While there were memories in that apartment, most of them were bad ones... ones of my husband so sick that he was quite a different person, one who screamed and threw things and allowed his relatives to dictate my life without standing up for me. Those are all memories that dominated that place and dominated our first three years of marriage, before we were finally able to diagnose and cut out a food allergen that was wrecking absolute havoc on his brain.

I am so grateful for this new place, for the storage space and the natural light and the general livability and lack of lead pipes and the quiet streets. We have heard one (1) vehicle the entire time we've lived here. At the old place we were both routinely woken at night (sometimes multiple times) by people street-racing in souped-up Fords at 3am. I sleep like the dead (I have had roommates consider calling 911 because I sleep so deeply) and even I was sleeping poorly.

I'm not sure whether I should treasure those troubled memories of early marriage or if I should be happy to turn my back on them. I don't want to forget how much better things are now. Both my husband and I are coughing less. We can drink the water straight out of the tap and it tastes delicious. We get curbside recycling pickup... there wasn't even a recycling depot in the town where we used to live (let alone pickup) until mere months before we moved. We have more of a social life already than we ever could have dreamed of in the old town. This is an upgrade in every way.

 

I am struggling to set up my dance studio. I have the flooring pieces (although I do want my larger one from my parents' house), and the room is almost cleaned up (it's been a disaster for most of the time we've lived here because it was one of the lower priorities for unpacking and organization). I'm struggling to want to. I don't know if the stress of moving (and work -- currently in the middle of a show that breaking ticket sales records for the theatre as well as launching ticket sales for next season) is zapping my motivation, or just thinking of all the times I've tried and failed to get dance going again since I've gotten married. I have an opportunity to teach in the new year, and I think I might take it... although last time I tried to teach choreography, I was raked over the coals for being 'unrealistic' and my co-worker actively sabotaged my work so I'm very nervous how it will go. I don't know if the flame of dance has died, necessarily, but it has certainly had a large amount of dirt shovelled onto it.

 

I also want to write again. NaNoWriMo 2023 was the last time I wrote anything longer than a blog post. I don't have any ideas, but I'm finding myself poking absentmindedly around for one. I mentioned wanting to write again to my husband the other day and for the first time in our entire marriage, he said something supportive instead of telling me how I'm wasting my time writing. It might be a while before I actually write something, but I'm open to an idea.

 

I don't know if I should post practice videos on Instagram again when I do start dancing. The world of social media changed significantly during the pandemic, right at the time my in-laws banned me from posting on it. It's an alien landscape to me now, all ads and fake positivity, both of which I have always avoided. There's a definite allure now to the thought of not posting a single thing about dance until I create my next major work... maybe during Nachmo? I do have the space for working out choreography now, so maybe I can do an honest-to-goodness Nachmo for once instead of just a thought experiment (I say that as if I didn't choreograph an entire one-woman show during Nachmo 2023 that got screened in their online festival and is now one of my highest-viewed videos on YouTube).

 

So far, both my husband and I are healthier and happier. I had hoped that this move would give us a place of peace where we can heal from the old wounds and grow into a life instead of just an existence.

 

So far... I think it just might be working. 

Reflections On Stories From The Incandescent Years

I miss this place and I want to write something here, but I'm not sure what.

I've been scrolling Facebook for two hours and am mostly writing this in an attempt to get myself to just stop and do something productive. Supper is in the oven already, but the dishes haven't been done in three days. I had dental surgery yesterday and they told me not to exercise, but what else is there to do?

I want to listen to music, but I want to buy more, as I'm getting bored with the variety I have (which sounds ridiculous even as I type that; I have over five thousand songs in my iTunes, which apparently equals over fifteen days).

Recently I've gotten into vapourwave, specifically climatewave (which is to say I've gotten into early '90s smooth jazz). It's the only thing besides dance that calms (or at least drowns out) the scream of static coursing through my brain every second of every day. That music transports me to when I was a child and everything was predictable and safe -- Mom was always in the kitchen making supper around 5pm, Dad would spin records well into the evening and then put on an instrumental CD for us after we were tucked in for the night, Grandma always had cartoons and 'coffee and cookies' for us whenever we went to visit, and we'd watch Grandpa slice apples in his chair with his little paring knife against his thumb while he watched the news. Church was on Sundays, and we'd go to Kosmos or Zambelli's afterwards. Incandescent light still cast a warm glow over everything (maybe the phasing out of incandescent has contributed to the phasing out of human warmth and connection). We were poor, but we were comfortable. We lived out on the exposed fields of the vast prairie, but we were safe.

When they say 'music is my drug,' maybe this is what they mean. I have always felt more comfortable thinking about the past than the future, but now I'm using the music of the past to actively block out the present. The present is filled with angry people and the AI takeover and 'we're moving forward with another candidate' emails and fluorescent lights and grey fast food restaurants and my brain screaming but not in words and the persistent feeling of time moving too fast. If black holes really do slow down time, somebody should install one by the moon so we can all catch our breath once in a while.

Maybe then I could see the stories again.

I used to write mundane little stories here, whole blog posts about computers crashing and construction delays and moments with friends. Stories that took maybe five minutes to live through, and would have been forgotten in a few weeks if I hadn't put them here.

That's what life is, isn't it? A thousand tiny stories that make up who we are.

My parents, though not artists, are both born storytellers. My dad is the unofficial keeper of the generational stories, the ones that he heard at his grandfather's knee and has passed on to us (and all the neighbours). I got my comedic timing from my mom, who has a one-liner for every occasion. Buying gas while running errands can become a hilarious encounter by the time she gets back home to tell us about it. To not be able to see the stories in my life the way I used to feels like losing myself as a person. Have I lost the stories because my memory doesn't work? or does my memory not work anymore because I lost the stories?

Maybe all I have to do is re-cultivate my eye for story. The only thing is I'm not sure how to do that.

Nine Years / Yesterday

Nine years ago my cousin, age nine, drew her final tortured breaths into burning lungs.

 

This year marks the epicentre. She has now been gone as long as she was here.

 

It was about 9.45pm, with the last gasps of a golden sunlight running lazily across the wooden floor when my mother hung up the phone and made the pronouncement of death to me.

 

My cousin left us on the coattails of the sun as it dipped away from us into space. Every year as the days lengthen, so does my dread... more daylight to carry my loved ones away.

It still feels as if I'm sitting there on that chair in my parents' dining room. It's been nine years of sitting on that chair.

I've graduated college. I've gotten married. I've moved multiple times. I've rewritten a literal novel. I'm still sitting in that chair at my parents' house. I'm still seeing the golden sunlight take my cousin away. I can still see her face on the Skype call the last time I saw her at Easter -- you know, the holiday where we celebrate Jesus' resurrection and talk about how He conquered death.

She had two weeks of breaths left in her and none of us knew. My uncle, who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer eight months before and had already outlived his prognosis by Valentine's Day, had another four years of breaths in his lungs. Yet somehow this lively, spirited little girl running around only had two weeks of air left and none of us knew.

Writing, Escape, and Control

Originally written 24 December 2021, 2.53am.

I started writing very young.

I took to the written word extremely quickly as a child. I was reading competently at age four and by the time I was eight I was attempting to write books of my own. I was constantly narrating the world in my mind as I watched events unfold, narrating as if I was narrating a book. Sometimes, it turned out, I was (though surprisingly few events in my novels have stemmed from real-life events).

When I was a young (and later an older) teenager, I holed up in my room, hiding from my mother's absolutely unpredictable rages and the awful words about any and all my minuscule failures rushing out of her mouth like swords to my battered soul, writing, on looseleaf, on scraps of schoolwork, on typewriters, on my beside table, on anything I could get my hands on. Writing and listening to music became the only two ways to drown out the horrible sounds of my later childhood and early teen years.

When I wrote, the world in my head dampened the sounds of the world where nobody cared and nobody listened. The aural effect of music filled in the gaps that writing couldn't. I stayed up late into the night and filled the silence with music -- music for enjoyment rather than to smother the awfulness -- and spun out dozens of alternate universes from a curious coalition of my brain and my fingers. At age fourteen I completed my first novel draft, and some seventeen more have followed suit since then.

I joined Facebook, then started this blog. My writing, heretofore a closely guarded secret, expanded onto platforms that people could read. The blog especially was a very raw and vulnerable place for me. Facebook, however, gave me a platform to hone skills I was weak on, such as succinctness (remember the 430-character limit?) and clarity. I had a moderately good run as a pseudo-comedy writer who simply spun everyday events into decently funny one-liners. As I aged and my mental health worsened and I started losing friends to depression, I slipped almost unconsciously into a storyteller/advocate style of writing. I told my own story with unflinching starkness, in hopes that the friends and family who read my vignettes would better understand and be better equipped to help their friends and family with depression. There are so many misconceptions surrounding mental illness in general and depression in particular, and I, as a writer on the inside of both, had a unique perspective -- and I thought maybe a sort of obligation -- to bring to the people. The act of writing about my experiences had the side benefit of helped me to clarify them and even to bring some modicum of healing to my now even-more-shipwrecked soul.

Then I met my husband. Or, more accurately, my in-laws.

Of course they were nice at first. They're still decently nice now, however, many wars were had on the topic of my Facebook posts.

To this day, I'm not sure what their issue is. There is a history of depression in the family, so it wasn't like they didn't understand. But essentially they forbade me from posting on Facebook. Not one single post about mental health was allowed. Not one iota of honesty about myself and my life was allowed. I fought this, tooth and nail. There were many screaming matches, and the wedding was nearly called off multiple times because I could not understand how they could say that they wanted me in their family, yet they wanted to chop off one of the very things that made me ME. Without writing, without honesty, I would not be the same person. That seemed to be exactly what they wanted.

Eventually, I gave in. I was just so tired of the screaming matches. I went back to writing on this blog (luckily I hadn't gotten to the point of telling them of its existence yet) because it was once again the only place I would write whatever I wanted to and not be torn to shreds for the next 4-5 business days.

In some ways, I regret that. I regret letting them control me like this. My husband is great, but his family is an absolutely impossible battlefield of land mines -- sorry, I mean unwritten expectations. The blog is a valuable outlet, but not writing as much as I used to makes me feel like I'm only half of a human being -- and a primarily-dead half-human being at that. I was finally beginning to come into myself as a communicator, and they casually stripped 25 years of writing, of ME, away from me like they were putting groceries away after running errands.

For as long as I can remember, crafting the written word has been a part of my life. And all it took were some overbearing in-laws to strip me of one of the three (3) things that has ever consistently brought me comfort over the course of this life filled with an almost-comical and certainly-unbelievable amount of death and misfortune.

They wonder now why I don't trust them. Why I don't talk. Why I come off as so rude, distant, and angry all the time. Nobody ever stops to think that that's what happens when you take away one of somebody's only coping mechanisms.

Rebuilding (again... maybe...)

For my birthday this past August, my parents bought me Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. And working through that book has begun to remind me of all the things I loved about being an artist before everybody died.

I loved sitting in my bedroom in my parents' basement as the tree-dappled southern sunlight poured in, lighting the pink walls aflame with warmth and colour and kick-starting my imagination. I loved sitting at the desk, feeling the keys beneath my fingers or the pen scratching softly across the looseleaf. I loved sitting on the pink carpet, dreaming up huge, intricate dances for a dozen dancers, even though I didn't even know that many serious dancers in real life. I loved seeing the characters build the novels right before my eyes -- people often said that reading my writing felt like watching a movie, and I think that's because that's how my works often come to me. I watch the events play out like a film in my mind's eye and I just write down what happens. I choreograph the same way -- I put on the music and write down what the dancers in my head do. I do love the rush of satisfaction when I finish a project, but I also love the challenge of answering the perennial question 'what's next?'

I'm starting to make art again. I'm not choreographing whole dances or writing entire scripts in five days like I used to, but I'm still choreographing, and I'm starting to write posts for this blog again. I'm hoping that's the starting point for writing fiction again.

Despite being out of college for over two years now, I've still been feeling blocked. The first year was because I quite literally almost killed myself trying to prove to a bunch of gaslighting profs that I was actually putting in the work to get that degree, plus I did two major moves in three months and started a major romantic relationship with somebody who did not live anywhere near ANY of the cities I moved to. The second year was the year I planned a wedding during a pandemic and then moved to an entirely new town (because living with one's husband is a thing) and tried to figure out married life after exactly one (1) year of romantic-relationship experience -- total.

My goals are very small. Between the housework, my actual paying job, spending time with the man I married, sleeping, and basic personal hygiene, it often feels like I have no time for myself other than the three-minute drive home from work every day and I feel like I have no time for my artistic pursuits anymore. Nobody tells you that being a wife is a full-time job by itself. I knew motherhood was, but nobody warned me about plain old marriage. Basically if I can't accomplish my daily goals on my 30-minute work break while I'm eating a sandwich with one hand or during my bathroom breaks at home, they aren't going to happen.

So my goals went from 'make twelve full-blown dance videos this year' and 'practice for three hours every day' to 'choreograph two sets of eight every day' and 'read for fifteen minutes.' I'm telling myself that those two sets of eight every day will add up over time and eventually become a full dance piece, and that one chapter a day will result in finished books. Just like Duolingo has you learn a language ten minutes at a time, I'm actively trying to sneak in my creative pursuits in furtive five-minute bursts. I have no idea when exactly I'm going to write 50,000 words in November because 1,667 words per day does take slightly longer than a bathroom break, but I guess I'm going to have to figure it out.

And maybe having small goals because of my time and space limitations right now is the best way to reintegrate myself into the creative world, especially after all the harm that college did to my creative brain. If I had set a big goal like 'twelve dance videos in twelve months,' I wouldn't have even started. The goal would have been too big and overwhelming. But I can trick myself into two sets of eight. I can wheedle myself into fifteen minutes of reading. (It also really helps to track how many days in a row I've managed to do this -- I am VERY competitive and would hate myself for the rest of my life if I broke a long daily streak.) I've already finished two library books (and returned them on time -- no renewals. This has literally NEVER happened before in my entire life), and have put in consistent time on a couple of dances. I am telling myself consistency is enough right now.

Day 23: National Choreography Month

Finished the Queen song and now I'm getting back to my choreographic roots with a large-group White Heart number -- specifically Heaven Of My Heart (1993).

I think this one comes out of some of the emotional background of Who Wants To Live Forever -- that weight of nostalgia, that longing for another world. I'm still so tired of being here. I'm not suicidal, most of the time, just weary... this breathtaking, soul-scarring, heartbreaking, physically heavy weariness, this bone-crushing, mind-melting nostalgia for something I can hardly remember or perhaps never experienced. I feel like I don't belong here, and I want to go somewhere where I do... home -- wherever that even is anymore.

Locked in a sky so blue

Is a land made for me and you

And we're going there, but until the dream comes true

There's a secret place

So full of love and grace

When the world spins and breaks apart

I'm going to the other heaven of my heart...

I've been realising lately that the theme of a lot of my work (not just choreography) is the theme of escape. Not extreme, altered-reality escape -- not detaching oneself from one's emotions; more like escaping into a better reality. I spent so much time in my head because that was where my better worlds were -- the worlds in my head that I unlocked and sculpted with my fingers on the keyboard and my feet on a creaking wood floor. Maybe this song best describes what I've been doing with my artistic output all along. The themes were about escaping because that's what I have always wanted, more than anything -- to be able to reach the goodness that exists only just beyond the curtain of the physical, time-bound world. I can feel it, I sometimes see glimpses of it, but it can't come here, and, until my time comes, I can't go there either. I guess this is why songs like Terry Scott Taylor's Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (among others) resonate with me SO strongly -- at least there is one other person on the planet who sees it too. It's not just me.

And escape is not just the theme of my work, it's often the reason I create. I can go forward to heaven, or back to times I had with people who I will never see again until I can move forward to heaven -- and in the past few years, creating art has often done both at the same time. Choreographing this song specifically takes me back to the time when I still had viable dreams of choreographing and performing, and the friendship of people like M and Brittney. If I could lock myself in any year forever, it would be 2012. There was so much potential and hope in my life then. Now I'm just old and washed up. Doing this piece has really made me realise just how critical M's very existence was to my creative process. There's a duet section in this piece, and I still see her beside me in my mind's eye, doing the beats and turns as I write them down -- her endless energy and bright dramatic eyes. She wanted to escape too, and she was lucky enough to get it. I would be lying if I said I wasn't jealous. I've already choreographed a piece in her memory, but I think this one is in her memory too. No doubt everything I choreograph from now on will be.

I'm about a third of the way through the song now. It's a light, airy allegro piece, very ethereal, lots of arms and heads and a few floating turns... a lot like the music itself, energetic yet dream-like. I am LOVING choreographing the duet part (I still have a little bit of it to go), especially making them intertwine with each other and with White Heart's glorious harmonies. I can't put into words how much I wish M could dance this with me for real. I wish the curtain of time didn't seperate us.

There I go, trying to escape again.

My Room

Cleaning out my room at my parents' house for the final time.

Sure, I've moved away before, but before I always had the option of coming back. My possessions continued to reside here in this cheery pink room, under increasingly thick grey layers of dust and the occasional spiderweb. I never really truly had to move out of this room. I left for years at a time, but it was still my room.

But now I've just gotten married, and my sister is planning to take over my room. This requires me to clean it out for perhaps the first time ever. I've certainly straightened it up once or twice, but never truly deep-cleaned, and I've especially not had to pack it all away into storage at the same time. It's funny how few of my finds truly surprised me (apparently I pretty much knew exactly where everything was, despite some things not seeing the light of day for over a decade), yet when I dusted them off, only then did they bring back memories.

I'm a terribly, terribly sentimental person. I will keep a Staples receipt for pens and paperclips for nostalgic reasons, even though I know I will probably never look at it again. Part of the reason I had never truly cleaned out my room was because I was suffering so much loss already and I knew I couldn't bear to throw anything away. But now I'm forced to, and that, coupled with knowing this room is no longer my safe place anymore, is a very emotional process.

This room was where I cowered in fear from my mother's outbursts and listened to ABBA CDs nonstop on my headphones. This room was where I listened to Oilers hockey games and paced the carpet in the dark as I listened, working out some new plot idea. This room is where I would write all day long and late into the night on my old Windows XP machine with a 20GB hard drive (pretty sure the processor on that thing was measured in megahertz), or simply stare at the screensaver and daydream. This room was where I would sit on the floor after dance class and choreograph to Petra and White Heart, planning all sorts of dance shows with M. This room was where I sketched out revenge stories centering around the youth group that hated me. I've fallen asleep on the grey-pink carpet, I've made endless crochet and cross-stitch projects, I played hours of Polly Pocket with my sister, I've written over half a million words of ideas and prose, I've tap danced, I've even practiced a few ballet steps here. I've done so many self-portrait photoshoots, written so many blog posts, lost myself in so many dreams, cried so many silent but tortured tears. I moved into this room somewhere around 2003/2004, and it's been a home base for me ever since.

I found cards with greetings in both M's and Brittney's handwriting. I found a bear that my late grandfather gave me when I got baptised. I found mementos from a 2004 trip to see my now-deceased great-uncle and his wife in B.C. I found bookmarks my sister had made me, story ideas I'd sketched out on the back of church bulletins, and tickets for shows I'd performed in as a child. I even found a folder with all my work and costume designs and very early choreography for a book/dance company idea I had nursed for some three or four years in my early teens before joining the real world and realising that that exact particular idea was simply not feasible (it's not completely dead, though, the dream of a dance team and even some sections of choreography from that period still live on in my present work).

These are things that you never know the value of when you first receive them. This is another part of why I can't throw anything out. How could I have known on my 20th birthday when I received that card from M that she would be dead barely five years later? If I had thrown that card out two weeks later like I'm told 'normal people' always do, I would now have nothing left of the fierce woman who so often inspired and encouraged me. No-one else will ever exist with that exact handwriting, that exact way of wording things. And even if someone could forge it, they could never forge her personality, her essence, her spirit, her -- the things that all who knew her fell in love with.

Brittney was one of the very few people who was capable of being encouraging in writing. Sometimes her birthday cards to me were the only source of encouragement I would get for that entire year. This words-of-affirmation person had to scrape together all the encouragement she could, and sometimes it was contained only in the left-handed script of this one dear friend.

How could I know that my grandfather would only give me two gifts in the entire twenty-three years he knew me? Yes, I will never play with that stuffed bear, but my grandfather was a hardened, bitter man who rarely showed approval, let alone affection. That bear showed me what his gruff voice and distant actions never managed to do. I would rather remember that than simply replay the fading memory of his critical voice over and over in my head.

Memories fade. And these people meant far too much to me for me to justify callously tossing aside the things that remind me of them and their huge, huge impacts on my life. And because I never know which bright young life will disappear next, I can't afford to lose any of those memories. I learned when M died that just because something is statistically improbable (losing TWO best friends at age 22 in three years?), DOES NOT mean it's impossible. Especially if it's something bad. You know, like losing SEVEN people to death in four years; all but one under the age of 27. What's to say there won't be an eighth? Statistically, there should have been no more deaths in my life after Brittney for a good fifteen years, save maybe my grandfather due to his age and health. Yet there were five more in 1,461 days. Improbable, you say -- but it happened. It happened in real life, in my life. You truly never know. You can 'be positive' and 'not think about it now' and believe in the health and wealth of your friends all you want, but you truly. never. know. Nobody escapes the death of the ones they love the most. Nobody. (Except the ones who die young.)

(Side note: I am literally not even joking, iTunes just started playing Memories Fade by Tears For Fears. I did not plan this, and I am not making this up. I just started playing TFF and I had completely forgotten that song even existed.)

This room has been my safe haven through a lot of things, when there was no-one to talk to and no-one to go to. The golden light, amplified by the pink walls, seemed to bring a modicum of hope even on the darkest days of suicidal depression. The lone incandescent bulb that hung from the 2x10s that made up the upper floor above me lit the way to many a late-night story idea -- the spaceships that allowed me to travel through time and space, away from the pain of whatever situation I was in.

To not have even the option of spending a day alone in this room again -- it steals the breath from my chest. This room was one of my few constants in a world that insisted on dying away around me. It was always there, even after Brittney died and M died. It was my sanctuary when the world was against me (and let's be honest, it still is in many ways). I feel untethered without it, but it is time...
Another goodbye. It never gets easier.

Thank you, big pink room with the tree-dappled southern sunlight and the desks lining the walls, for all the good times and for sheltering me through all the bad times. Thank you for all the memories. Thank you for the safety and protection and inspiration you provided. I'll miss you something awful.

The Voice in My Head

Around February I started letting my dance practice routine slip. At first it was busyness, then sickness, then both... then I moved away and couldn't access the studio anymore, and the practice pretty well ceased entirely. There have been a couple of one-off practices over the past few months, but there was no consistency. My motivation was completely gone -- depression and a general sense of purposelessness had eaten it all.

Today I hit the wood for the first time in a while. Nothing spectacular -- some warm-up and improv, some learning (trying to add a new piece into the rep), quite a lot of troubleshooting (where IS my weight after a turning cramp roll?).

Then the stretch session.

Back in January, I had finally gotten my (left front) splits down. This was the culmination of literally YEARS of work and pushing and stretching, often multiple stretch sessions a day. I have footage from May of me in the splits, and that was probably honestly the last time I did them. I knew I had probably lost them, but I also now knew that they were attainable. I did my usual stretches that I had been doing at the beginning of the year, mentally pre-accepting the likelihood that I would not have the splits today.

And it's funny -- the entire time I was stretching, it took me back to that time. And I heard the voice of my program director, telling me I wasn't good enough, nagging me to 'just be more flexible' -- as if that was up to my willpower rather than my horribly short muscles -- all of it, the things I had almost managed to forget, racing back in around me as I stretched, ringing and echoing in my ears as if he had just said it this morning. I had already accepted that I wouldn't have the splits today, but still his voice prattled through my head, all about how I would never be good enough. Not because I lacked grace, or skill, or discipline, or artistry, or ballon, or experience, because I have all of those things (at least on some level), but purely and only because I didn't have a 180 extension. And that was all he could see and all he could talk about, and by extension that became all I could see and all I could think about.

And even now, trying to stretch in order to better myself, because I want to stretch, it just took me back to that time where his voice screamed through my brain about how I wasn't good enough and I never would be and it exhausted me all over again, even though I've graduated, even though I don't have to answer to him anymore, even though I'm not even in the same province anymore. I still carry his voice with me, embedded in my head. I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't -- practice, that is. If I practice, I'm not trying hard enough and I'm not good enough. If I don't practice -- well, then I'm lazy and am still not trying hard enough.

I'm too tired to even be angry anymore. I spent so much energy trying to please him, trying to find the magic bullet to instant flexibility, trying to be good enough to at least get him off my case. It used up my last reserves of energy and willpower and motivation. There's nothing left. I gave it all to this formidable man who could not, would not be pleased with my absolute best efforts. It's all burned away, a flash in the pan. And here I am sitting on the couch, having eaten only three meals in the past week because not only do I not have motivation to dance, I don't have motivation for anything. It's all been used up.

I know it's possible to retrain my brain to think on a different line, to hear a different voice when I'm stretching besides his saccharine sweet, syrupy voice telling me very nicely that I would never be any good at anything if I couldn't do the splits, but that will take a Herculean amount of effort and I don't even have the energy to pour myself a bowl of cereal half the time, let alone retrain an entire thought pattern during an already physically demanding activity.

Nobody here in Alberta knows him. He has little, if any, influence with anyone here. Nobody here knows he thought I was the worst performer he'd ever had in his department, and honestly nobody would care that he thought that because what he thought doesn't matter to them. I have the chance to prove myself here on my own merits, with or without his f*cking approval.

But his voice is in my head, and it's sabotaging my own merits.

And no, I didn't have the splits today.

Honest Ramble

Can I be very, very honest about my life right now? Here is one of the few places I can be, because here, on this website, on my domain name, nobody is required to read anything I write. If you want to read it, fine. If you don't, fine. Nobody's forcing anything on this blog down anybody's throat. On Facebook and Instagram, I have a persona to keep up, at least a little bit. I do show frustration on there sometimes, but I try to balance it with humour (even if it's sarcastic/dark humour).

I'm frustrated beyond words at my lack of ability to get a job. I've been job-hunting for three years. And I'm not being picky. I've applied for waitressing, cashier, reception, janitor, construction, literally anything that I'm even kind of half-qualified for. I feel like a failure as a human being because I'm not self-sufficient, because I still need financial assistance. People tell me, 'just apply for everything.' I know... I've been doing exactly that for three years. And I feel like I'm defective, like something's fundamentally wrong with me because despite being very qualified for a variety of different types of work, literally nobody even contacts me for an interview or anything. How is it so easy for everyone else to get a job and not me? What's so horribly, horribly wrong with me that it's immediately obvious even to those who have never met me in person?

I haven't practiced dance since February. I just -- haven't. I was busy, then sick, then injured, then recovering, now sick again. And now I'm wondering if I even bother picking it up again because now I'll be so far behind -- again. And it's not like all that practice was serving me well anyway... I was easily the worst dancer in Fame.

I am bored as heck. Having no job and no more schoolwork (ever) has left me with a LOT of free time that I really wasn't prepared for. Ordinarily I would just use it for practice, but I'm not even sure I want to put in that much effort anymore... I'm not sure it's going to be worth the time and energy I've put into it, and I have so little energy to play with as it is. I'm not sure I should even bother pursuing the performing arts anymore. I'm not sure what I should be pursuing or what I should be doing. I feel very, very purposeless. Up till now, the arts was my purpose. But now... now I don't even have that. Never before in my life have I not had the arts, some kind of creative project, to capture my imagination and my days. Never, never before. Is this how people live? Is this the hell they wake up to every day? How do they breathe under that weight?

I just feel so, so useless. I feel like I have nothing to bring to the world that somebody else isn't already doing ten times better. I feel like everyone's got everything taken care of and they don't need me for anything. I worked so hard and I tried so hard and I practiced so much and it wasn't enough to be of use to anybody. I feel like I have nothing to contribute, nothing to say that hasn't already been said, nothing to do that hasn't already been done. They say to put your own unique stamp on the world and to live life as only you can, but my only calling card is that everything I do is subpar. And maybe that's not even my fault... but it feels like it is.

I don't want to just spend my life watching YouTube. I don't want to spend it scrolling through Facebook. But right now those are literally the only options available to me. I don't have a job and I don't have talent and I don't have money to start something even moderately big. I can't even do another dance video -- I don't have the money.
I'm scared that I'm just wasting my life and that I'll be mooching off my family for the rest of my life. I'm scared no-one needs me. I'm scared I'm missing something.

My brain literally feels like it's being eaten by acid -- melting, burning. I wanted so much to create things, but they're always, always subpar and I'm exhausted from expending so much energy into something that's worth nothing.

When you're a kid you can do something as stupid as make bracelets and sell them for $5 each and make money that way. But when you're an adult they expect so much more from you. They expect the world. They expect complete perfection. Nobody will pay $5 for a string with three beads on it made by a fully functioning adult human who's perfectly capable of going out and getting a job... right?

I feel unheard -- completely invisible. I send emails and it's like they're never received. I talk to people and it's like they never heard my voice. I stand by them, I even touch them, and they look right through me. It's like being gaslighted by the entire world -- 'I never ignored you.' Then why do you refuse to acknowledge my existence?

I'm aware that time is marching on and I'm doing nothing with it and it'll end soon and I'll have nothing to show for it, but it's not for lack of trying. I tried -- I tried. I freaking tried.

I feel like I'm trapped and I'm drowning and I can't get out.

NaNoWriMo Indecision

National Novel Writing Month is coming up. Is that a thing here still?

I'm not sure.

There are a lot of emotions surrounding NaNoWriMo this year. I haven't done it since 2016 -- and even then I didn't finish, for the first time since 2008 (too much homework, too much stress, was still processing/not over The Year of Hell -- I pretty well imploded that semester). I haven't had much for ideas really since 2014 (Kyrie). Even the fire for the old ideas still languishing in my notebooks and computer folders has largely died.

On top of that, my perennial writing buddy committed suicide last month. And NaNoWriMo is significantly less fun alone (never mind the grief involved...).

I want to honour her. A good way would be to keep writing, in her memory. I want to give her a cameo in this year's novel, but how, and where? Do I write the entire novel about her? A subplot? A passing glance in the fabric of the backstory?

Earlier this summer, as I was contemplating this year's NaNoWriMo, I had toyed with the idea of finally doing the sequel for one of my earliest stories -- it was a time travel story, and I had left space for a sequel (which I'd already sketched out at that time). The main character in that story was in fact loosely inspired by Brittney (who passed away four years after I wrote it, but not before reading and giving her approval to the rough draft), and I have yet to write anything in her memory. I still have all my notes ('all' = maybe half a page) for that sequel, but I don't trust myself to pull 50,000 words out of it. In my younger writing days, I could start with literally nothing more than a sentence and maybe two characters (not necessarily named) and get a decent novel out of it, but 2012 proved that I don't really have that ability anymore (that novel literally ended with multicoloured cows in a field singing karaoke. It was supposed to be a serious military drama). I need some kind of an actual plot idea, or at the very least a character voice (Kyrie came entirely out of a quarter-page character monologue that fell fully formed into my head one day. Even all my subsequent planning for Kyrie was written in that character's voice).

I don't trust myself to be able to pull off that sequel. I know that of course if I doubt myself I definitely won't be able to so instead I should just fling myself right into it without giving a care. The artist cannot put a brush to canvas doubting... (Milosz)

My other idea is a late 1950s theatre drama. I have three characters, but I don't know what the drama is, and that scares me. Five years ago, this would have been enough of a plot for me to start November with. But now, all I see is the terrifying blank space ahead.

Lately I've been fascinated by the modern-day parable. My last novel (2016) was that, and since then I've written a couple parabolic short stories as well. Not only does it give me sort of a direction to go in, it gives the story greater weight. The problem is I've run out of parables. I feel this blockage keeping me from both the sequel and the theatre drama -- I want to have a faint whiff of a parable somewhere in the background of my story this year, but I can't find the one for either of these stories.

If I'm honest, I don't really trust myself to write another good novel at all. Never mind the fact that my last novel, written in such a haze of stress and exhaustion that I literally do not remember writing it, is probably the best thing I've written next to Kyrie.

But I do feel like I need to write something this year. I took last year off of NaNoWriMo, but I think writing another novel is the next step in my slow healing. I haven't truly enjoyed writing since before the Year of Hell (2015), and I want to get back into it. I feel the time is right. But I've changed so much and I don't know if I really truly trust myself to be able to do this again.
It's just been so long...

Upheaval and Music (A Snapshot)

Life has been in upheaval lately.

I am preparing to graduate this coming April (and none too soon, according to the powers-that-be...). I have planned several auditions for productions outside the college over the next couple of months -- hoping to hit the ground running so I don't experience the post-grad psychological crisis (because it's a real thing and it almost killed me last time). Also I actually managed to land an actual role with actual lines at the college (I know, I was shocked too). And I've now attended the funeral of a suicide (my very good friend -- a brilliant dancer and fearless writer).

I find myself re-evaluating my life quite a bit in the wake of all this. I am definitely ready to graduate -- not angry-ready, just ready. I sense I've more or less gotten all I'm going to get out of my current post-secondary stint and it's time to move on.

And my friend's death has redoubled my passion to live my life the way I feel called to rather than be pressured into spending it at some soulless desk job. I feel a bit of a burden in my spirit to live the life that she never will -- to dance just as brightly and passionately and to write with just as much verve and abandon as she did. It's up to me now to take up that mantle she left behind.

I don't know what any of this looks like. I guess I'll keep practicing and keep auditioning and keep performing. After all, that's basically the life I've always wanted anyway.

Tonight I'm listening to Michael W. Smith's brilliant album i 2 (EYE). This is the album that fits this night, this moment of my life, with its themes of providence and life (warts and all), and darkness and light and loss and sadness and camaraderie. As I've said before, where people cannot grasp the feelings in my soul, music can, and tonight this album is that music. I can't really describe it -- it's a strange mix of what MWS actually wrote coupled with my long bank of memories associated with this album and they all come together in this particular listening tonight. I wouldn't quite say it's bringing me comfort -- in fact as I Hear Leesha plays it's kind of ripping the hole left by my friend's death even bigger -- but it just fits. It makes emotional sense, on some deep subconscious soul level. It accompanies the upheaval with a sort of peace even at it brings me temporarily back to the times before everyone died, sitting in the Dodge Spirit in a Fabricland parking lot with my dad, playing this cassette over and over.

I'll help you find your way
When you're lost in all the madness
When you're blinded by your doubts
When you need someone to be there for you
I'll help you find your way...

On Human Souls

'I wish I'd never been told that this species had souls...'

- Mark Heard (iDEoLA), 1988.

Do we realise, really truly realise, how much power we possess to wound and to heal other humans? Every time we interact with somebody -- anybody -- we hold at least a tiny piece of their soul in our hands, if only for a few seconds.  Every facial expression, every word, every inflection, every movement has the power to encourage or to devastate, even a tiny bit. But tiny bits add up quickly. And if the other person trusts you, you hold rather a large chunk of their soul in your hands -- meaning the damage you could do is rather more severe. And the joy and encouragement you could give goes more quickly to a much deeper place within them. Not only that, you have access to their soul while you're apart. With the bank teller, it doesn't matter what you do after you've left the bank. It won't affect them. With a close friend, it matters a good deal what you do and say even when you're not with them because inevitably your actions will affect them on some level because your lives are so intertwined.

Similarly, do we realise how fragile and important these souls are that our thoughts and actions brush every day of our lives? Do we know how rare they are? If we knew all this, really knew it, with every fibre of our being, would it change how we interact with them? Would we realise how crucial our words and actions are in every single interaction? Would we be more empathetic? Would we as a culture be less locked up and afraid and lonely?

I guess we'll only know if we begin to realise how much rests in our hands in even the most routine moments of running errands or cooking dinner. This is part of the weight of glory, of being made in the image of God -- the very fact that we have access, however limited, to the souls of every other human on the planet.

Good Enough

20 June 2018, 11.48pm.

What do I want?

I want somebody to message me, out of the blue, and tell me, in detail, that even if I never 'accomplish anything' (splits, more videos, better ballet technique, fame, decent singing ability, any acting role ever, published writing), that they (hopefully this message comes from multiple people) will still love me and need me and not hate me for not being as good as they are no matter how hard I try.

I just want somebody to (platonically) love me. I want to know that if I were to be completely incapacitated from an unforeseen circumstance, there would still be people who love me and want to spend time with me, even if I had nothing to give them in return.

I want off this merry-go-round, this trying to earn your affection and attention and failing at every chance I have to redeem myself.

It's literally like a taskmaster standing over me with a whip most days. By the grace of God, I've never struggled with an actual eating disorder, but I really resonate with the way I've heard people with EDs describe their illness. It's this constant thing in your head, telling you you haven't tried as hard as you could have -- as hard as you should have (you lazy, unmotivated disaster of God's creation). If you don't lose five more pounds (master -- not learn, master -- an entire pointe dance) today, you are a failure and nobody wants you and you should just go rot in hell.

This script is screaming in my brain 24/7. While others are visiting with friends and having fun and relaxing, I'm in the studio, alone, dancing the same variations over and over until I black out from lack of oxygen, sweating so much my shirt sticks to me and my hair is literally dripping, telling myself over and over 'that was awful. Do it again. Do it right this time or else,' but it's never, never right. There's always some mistake. It's never good enough. No matter how much I practice I can never silence the voices in my head: "if you want to do this, you need to be more flexible/get your stamina up/try harder/get your shoulders down/work your turnout..." with the implied unspoken 'you will never be a dancer because you can't do any of this.' The voices are never, ever silenced. It's never good enough. I'm in the practice room, singing until my asthma kicks in and my throat is hoarse from the subsequent coughing -- breathe right, don't tense your tongue, NARROW FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, are you letting it flip into head voice, don't shoulder breathe, are you even singing anything close to the right pitch and diction, and why does all this hurt so much if this is what I'm supposed to be doing? I'm sitting in front of my computer, writing, picking, shaping words and stories and emails and posts and fine-tuning and tweaking and maybe one day I'll get something good enough to submit and maybe even good enough to get published... or maybe even just good enough for you to actually understand what I'm trying to tell you because apparently my words obscure what I'm trying to say.

There is no rest. None. Ever. If I sit down without choreography notes or a novel document or a script in my hand, the whip breaks across my back again ('you're not even trying! No wonder you haven't achieved your dreams yet -- you just sit around not practicing. You lazy waste of space'). It's like that ElectroBOOM video where the guy has to keep moving or be shocked. If I'm not spending every waking moment on perfecting my art, I'm wasting my existence. In the eloquent words of ElectroBOOM: "[Practice] or ----ing DIE!"

And people just turn a blind eye. All those hours, all that hard work, all that time and effort and energy and sacrifice... and they don't even seem to notice.

Which, of course, leads to the very obvious conclusion that all my hard work, all my effort, all my energy and sacrifice and fixing and time, is still not enough. I need to practice more hours -- maybe then there will be a more discernible difference -- one that people will pick up (without me having to fish for it). Maybe then I'll actually get closer to 'good enough' instead of farther behind it.

They say that if you miss one class, you notice, if you miss two classes, your teacher notices, and if you miss three classes, the world notices. That's how fast a dancer's technique degenerates. And I missed three years. It's probably impossible to catch up on that, but I still try. If I don't -- if I don't, then my dream dies for good, and I feel like I'm already tethered to it by only a single tiny thread of fairy floss, melting in the daylight, ready to vapourise at any second. I live every waking second terrified of the moment that thin fibre snaps and I practice myself half to death every day in a desperate attempt to beat that day back -- just a few more hours, just a couple more minutes. Every minute I don't practice is one minute closer to that moment when the thread snaps. And that is the Thing That Must Not Happen.

Somebody, please -- tell me it won't happen. Promise me that thread won't break. Tell me I'm good enough. Tell me -- and mean it. (Believe me, I can tell when you don't.) And no, a random TWLOHA 'you are enough' shirt on some stranger in a mall is not going to cut it. And if I'm not good enough, tell me how to get good enough. Lead me to that assurance. I cannot rest until I know with absolute certainty that I am good enough. And the frustrating thing is -- it's a moving target. I don't know what will prove that to me. And I'm hoping like heck you know (or can guess) because I don't.

The Fading Beauty of a Dream-Chapter

We wrapped up another show's run yesterday. Even though I tentatively have another show on the horizon for July, I still feel the dip -- the sense of having nothing to do, nothing to work for. It becomes a big empty pit in my chest so quickly. It's like waking up from a dream -- I was surrounded by people, some friends even, for a month and a half and now in a matter of twenty-four hours, all of that is gone. The bows have been taken, the goodbyes have been said, and the weight of emptiness/loneliness/purposelessness has settled in.

In many ways, you can never go back. There will never be those exact people in the cast together again -- for some, this was their last show with us. Others will join for future shows. But these people, in these roles, in these shows will never happen again. It's well and truly over, and it will never be truly replicated.

I was reading C.S. Lewis' The Weight of Glory the other day, and in it he mentioned how we often can only see beautiful things when they're ending -- the sunset just as it fades to grey, the final cadence just as its echo dies away. I feel this now -- I was a lot snippier during this show's run than I think I ever have been during a performance run, and there were definite moments when I took it out on people who didn't deserve the amount of snark I gave them. Perhaps I'm becoming a jaded struggling artist with years of experience but nothing really to show for it except a reservoir of bitterness. But today, at the cast party, I realised with more clarity just what I've been missing out on -- all these human lives and personalities and idiosyncrasies that I could have been interacting with but didn't because I was scared they wouldn't want me so I thought it better to stay out of the way.

I've had realisations like this before, which brings me more frustration and despair right now because I also realise this is very likely just another one in a long line. After years of isolation and abuse/being manipulated and now the self-hatred that arose from that even though I'm no longer in that situation, I have virtually zero people/conversation skills. Not only that, I have an impossibly high standard of perfection for myself that means the second I feel awkward (as I do when talking to people), I beat myself up about it for not being better at it, not being more confident, not saying the right thing, not keeping my mouth shut when I said the wrong thing... it's easier to wait for people to come talk to me than jump on that merry-go-round of frustration and futility. At least when they come talk to me, they (sort of) have some idea what they're getting into, so I feel less bad about my stumbling. So now we have this situation where I want to get to know people and interact with them and learn their little things that make them special, but I feel paralysed from actually making the first move.

I'm rambling. When I don't know what to talk about/write or how to finish something, I usually start talking about my insecurities in a desperate attempt to help people understand why I am the way I am. I know I find myself better able to interact with a person once I know where their tender spots are so I can tread carefully when I'm getting near those spots. So I assume others are the same, and it continues to surprise me when they get angry about me about giving them this information about myself.

I'm still rambling.

All I wanted to say was that this ending today -- even though I didn't let myself appreciate the cast during the show's run and was grumpy for most of it -- felt like waking up from a dream. It was a chapter in the beginning of my dream life (being a performer), and today feels like the alarm going off and now I have to go to work and push a pencil and for what? a dead-end job with nowhere to go that means anything. I didn't appreciate the dream when I was in it, but I don't want to leave it. As much as I personally struggled with various things, I do truly love the performing arts world and the people in it, even when that doesn't come across (and I wish it did).



What do you see when they finally turn out the light?
What do you hear when the music is stopped for the night?
Is there an answer
Or just a dancer leaving an empty stage?

~ Leslie Phillips, Beyond Saturday Night, 1983.

Cybermen and Parallel Universes

So I'm slowly making my way through Season 2 of the new Doctor Who, and I just watched the Cybermen doubleheader (I don't think there should be spoilers in this post, but I make no guarantees. Proceed at your own risk).

The whole thing with the emotion inhibitor (look at me go, SPOILERS already). How nice does that sound? To not have to make any more decisions, to have no more passion to tear me to shreds because the world doesn't want it, to never love and lose again, to not have to pretend this tornado of emotions in my head 24/7 doesn't exist because apparently nobody else is tormented by all the pain in the world so I must be the strange one... Every time I've come close to contemplating suicide, this is my reason -- if I kill myself, I don't feel any of this anymore. The love for dance and art and people that both drives me and destroys me will itself be destroyed and the pain will stop. I won't have to wake up every single morning and decide -- again -- whether I'm going to earn money with my life or if I'm going to live broke because I want to actually enjoy my job. Having to make that decision once is bad enough. Having to face it every single morning of your existence is exhausting beyond words. I could take the easy path and choose money -- then everyone will be happy with me and I won't legitimately have to wonder how in the world I'm going to pay for dance this year -- because there will be no dance.

So why do I keep choosing dance? Every morning I choose dance, even though it's killing me financially, physically, emotionally, mentally. Why don't I give up? Why don't I pick the easy way out? Why do I still hang onto this thing that, by all accounts, is useless?

I don't know. And that makes my continual decision to keep it even more ridiculous. It makes me trust myself even less. If I have no good reason to keep it -- should I? Shouldn't the fact that I don't have a real reason be reason enough to drop it?

The Doctor, in his big saving-the-universe speech, focused on the creativity and imagination that comes from being human, with all emotions intact. He saw that as a good thing. He's one of the last remaining beings in the universe to think that. People here, now, today don't see it that way. Art is disposable. And in this eco-friendly world, disposable is a Bad Thing. Therefore, I am one of the last vestiges of an old-fashioned dying race ("and good riddance to 'em!").

Something in my head just said, 'so make them wish you weren't the last.'

But how? In a world that will not listen to artists anymore, how do you get their attention? How do you make an impact on their lives when they turn a blind eye, mock you, call you stupid -- for the umpteenth time? Mickey got to move to a parallel universe -- one where he was able to prove his worth and earn his place. I don't have that luxury.

Now I'm trying to picture a parallel universe -- one with me in it, but not as a dancer. One in which I was a normal, reasonable person who went into -- I don't even know, what do females my age do, anyway? Say nursing. No dance, no acting, no singing, no performing, no writing, just nursing. Anatomy and biology and all that stuff. If art weren't an option in that world, if it literally didn't exist -- could I enjoy nursing (or whatever else)? I can't even picture that. I can imagine a lot of things. Choreography literally is imagination projected outside of the mind's eye. I once imagined a huge dancing choir of angels -- seventeen of them -- comforting a scared little child in the night over the space of four minutes and then spent the next eight hours writing it all down, capturing all the details of the movements I had seen in those four minutes. But I can't imagine a world in which I wasn't drawn to art in some form. I can't picture myself as a 'normal,' 'reasonable' person.

The only way I could be 'normal and reasonable' would be to become a Cyberman. To inhibit all those emotions and passions. And despite the Doctor's passionate speech to the contrary, wouldn't it be so much easier if there were none? Those of us who are artists at heart wouldn't have to feel our very souls being ripped out of our bodies by taking desk jobs and never having hobbies. We would finally be some semblance of happy and we would never realise that we weren't fulfilled -- just content to exist to shuffle papers and computer files around.

We could finally stop fighting for our losing cause.

Thought Bubble

Maybe I am crazy. What will this life give me in the end? Not money, that's for sure. Does love and passion outweigh money? Maybe I should stay here. Maybe I should move to the city. Can I really be happy doing a nine-to-five? How much long can I last in dance with my ankles the way they are? I should have picked up a second job. I'm chasing a pot of gold that doesn't exist. Now I won't be able to finish my degree. This degree won't pay for itself. I won't make that money back. Where will it come from? God funds the things that are of Him, right? Is this of Him? How do I know? Will He tell me? Do I just guess? How can I prove it? How much stock do I put in those tiny little signs? Am I spinning everything my way? Where is the money going to come from? Maybe I am stupid for trying to pursue this. Is art really needed? Does art really touch other people as much as it does me? Is it my place to try to encourage people who refuse to be? Why am I doing this, trying to help people if I can't even keep myself above despair? Who am I to say I have hope when I don't believe it? Why is money so freaking important? Why can't I enjoy my life without having to field these money questions? Should I get a student loan so I can continue college without having to take a second year off? But the degree won't pay for itself... Why do my thoughts never resolve, just keep running in circles? Why would God put this love for the stage in my heart if nothing could be done with it? What's the point? Was it to mock me? Was it to make other people feel better about their stupid ridiculous dreams? If I died everyone would bend over backwards trying to fulfil their interpretation of my dream without me but they don't give a rip about it now when I'm alive. Life would be easier if I was dead. I wouldn't constantly have to make these decisions and work my butt off for a dream that doesn't make money and a job to fund the dream. Although isn't that what people do anyway? They work their job to fund the American dream. All those hours and there's no money at the end of it and there's no strength left for the dream. Why is the world so stupid? You kill what you need. Or don't you need art? Is that a lie that I've believed in my desperation to avoid the nine-to-five? Is that all this is? Would the pressure be off if I gave up and worked as a secretary? Or would that be a denial of my soul and my God-given calling? But was it even given by God in the first place? How do I know? I should have applied for scholarships sooner. I should have... I should have... I should have... I don't know what I should have done. What is right? Is it right only for me or is it right for the plan of God to be fulfilled? Why do I have this burning need to avoid the nine-to-five? Am I just lazy and justifying it with art? Am I stupid? I must be or I would have applied for scholarships sooner... or given up this dream. Is it just that? Is it just a dream, a cautionary tale for my future self?

Round, round we go...

Another day, another 5600 revolutions of this circle, this thought bubble, this hamster wheel of the mind, spinning its tires and rehashing these questions to death, adding other more complicated questions when I'm least mentally prepared for it?

Welcome to my life.

Hold On - Courage As A Perfectionist

I'm sitting here stressing out -- again. About my family, about my friends, about my job. Last year was notoriously difficult and while things have leveled out some (the death rate has slowed down if nothing else), there's still plenty to freak out about -- my future. My family's future. The paths my friends are taking. All of those choices that I have to make and that the people around me are making. Now more than ever I understand the sentiment behind Randy Stonehill's classic Stop The World ("stop the world, I want to get off...").

Three years ago -- it seems like this was a completely different person then -- I had a dream and though I knew it would be difficult and I may not succeed, I went after it. The other day I was going through some papers and I found an article I had printed off of the Daniel Amos website because it was so inspiring. Terry Taylor was talking about the high road of artistry, how great art inspires and ennobles... that's who I wanted to be. That's still who I want to be. But now, having faced some of the very worst that the world has to offer (relationally), I despair if I can be that encouragement that I wanted to be. I can't even get myself out of this rut, how in the world can I possibly help anybody else? It's to the point where I'm too afraid to start anything creative. This has stymied all of my artistic output for more or less a year now. And it's the fear of everything -- fear that I won't be able to touch anybody, or be competent in my art, or even be able to pay for my own food and lodging. Probably the only fear that isn't a huge deal is the fear of people not taking me seriously -- I'm used to that, and I've had a while to acquaint myself with the idea that nobody likes an artist as a person.

I can't fix the world. I can't fix the world around me that's falling apart and I hate myself for it.

I'm a perfectionist. I always have been. For years I actually thought it was a good thing -- it was always trumped up as a virtue by the people around me. I nurtured it until I realised it was killing me and then I began to realise (slowly) that there were times I could (and should) loosen my hold on it. And I did -- rather successfully, in fact. Until everybody started dying.

And now it's back. Everything's back. All that self-blame, all the 'what if I had been here instead of there?' 'what if I had done things differently?' 'maybe it's my fault.' They say the greatest art comes from artists who battle the strongest demons of the heart, the mind, and the soul -- I touched on this in Kyrie -- but at what cost? Even the artist in Kyrie committed suicide. I knew the life of an artist was hard, but thought that somehow my love of creating art would pull me through it and help me to process it. Instead, I've become so scared of ruining this life that's already falling apart that I'm avoiding the very thing that, by all accounts, should help me. Isn't this where the greatest art comes from? ...from the depths of despair and anger and fear? Am I missing out on a huge treasure trove of art just beneath the surface?

What courage it must take for the artist to continue to wake up every single morning and commit to creating something even if he feels it will go absolutely nowhere. I know the failed projects are still learning opportunities -- I've experienced this myself. If it wasn't for the gong show that was my tenth NaNoWriMo novel, I wouldn't know what not to do nearly as well as I do now. The novels that came after that novel showed a marked jump up in quality, even for rough drafts. But for the artist to look at the families falling apart around him, to feel the pressure of a life of poverty that isn't always escapable, to see all the darkness consuming those he loves more than his own life, and to still try to capture the glimmer of light that he cannot see but hopes to heaven still exists is perhaps one of the greatest and most Herculean acts of courage a human being can attempt. And right now, I seriously doubt that I have that kind of courage -- the courage that whispers, hold on.

It's not about success. Or even about touching people's souls (yet). It's the courage to wake up every single morning and face a day in which somebody may die. Or leave their spouse. Or get cancer. And still try to create art to encourage people when your own soul despairs of ever being happy again.

Kyrie - Communication In Art (A Ramble)

I can't get over Kyrie.

For those who don't know, Kyrie is the name of my most recent novel, written November 2014. It's still in rough draft form, but I've reread it every three weeks since I finished it.

It was my first real foray into literary fiction (though I didn't realise at the time that that's what I was writing). Usually my novels are pretty plot-driven (get back to 'your' time before the plague kills you, destroy the magical jewel in the Red Cave before an entire civilisation dies, find your kidnapped wife before you go crazy with loneliness, that sort of thing), but in Kyrie, the plot mostly centered on the development of a relationship. When I wrote Kyrie, I was giving a lot of thought to the concept of being an artist -- being that weird 'unambitious' relative that everybody pretends doesn't exist, trying to distill truth and beauty into a medium of choice in a world that increasingly despises truth and beauty. And so the character Kyrie spent a lot of the book working out those same questions that I had, with the help of the book's first-person narrator, also a performing artist.

Spoiler alert: Kyrie dies before all of the questions are resolved. And that leaves her friend not only taking up the mantle of her unanswered questions, it leaves him with additional questions of his own regarding this almost-ethereal artist friend that seemed a step removed even from his world: questions about what she really knew, understood, and saw that she hadn't yet been able to communicate, as well as questions about the nature of her death (he's not convinced her death was a complete accident).

It's eerie now to think that I wrote Kyrie before my friend died (of lung failure), before my cousin died (of an asthma attack), before half my extended family died (of divorce). Kyrie's backstory involves a family whose harsh opinions she's actively trying to escape (how much do I want to escape the desolate landscape formerly known as family gatherings?) and Kyrie herself dies of an asthma attack. Again, I wrote Kyrie's death before 2015, with all the hell it would bring, dawned.

And maybe that's another part of why the writer's block is SO strong. If I write something 'bad,' in which the characters die or their families are torn to pieces... what if it actually happens in real life? I know that's pretty much impossible and the fact that Kyrie died of lung failure and then so did my friend and cousin is probably a coincidence... but when my cousin died I realised this stuff happens in real life. Real people die, and you can't get them back. Looking back, I think my treatment of Kyrie's friend's grief was actually pretty true-to-life, but to have it written in words somehow cheapens the depth of it. And here we come back to communication, truth, and beauty (not that we were actually there, come to think of it, but this is a ramble-post so let's roll with it). As a writer, how can I communicate the depths of this kind of hellish grief without cheapening it? How do I tune the phrases, the mood, the character's voice to give the proper amount of weight to it without swinging into melodramatic territory?

Life (A Long Rambling Update From The Creative Mind)

You may or may not be wondering by now -- besides geeking out over eighties music, what else have I been doing lately? (In other words, I just realised I haven't posted anything other than Music Day for... months.)

To answer the question... more choreography. Give me a second to look through my stacks of notes and I'll tell you what I'm working on.

*removes half-inch thick stack of paper from clipboard and shuffles through it*

Okay, here we go...

Eighth Wonder (White Heart): Back in December I was asked to compose and perform a ballet solo for the local dance team. I was originally going to perform my choreography for David Meece's One Small Child, but after some rehearsing, discovered that the stage in my mind is much, much bigger than most stages are in real life (unless we're talking hockey arenas). Since we aren't quite booking hockey arenas at this point, I would either have to re-work One Small Child or come up with something else. I chose Plan B, and Eighth Wonder was pretty much entirely choreographed within a week. Performances start in May. (I say this so casually, but inside I'm jumping up and down and squealing like a five-year-old.)

Raging Of The Moon (White Heart): I've been dreaming about this one for a long time, probably from the second time I ever heard this song. I'm finally working out some visual motifs and I've got formations and basic choreography figured out until about the three-minute mark. It's a lot like what I did with Speechless (big epic formation dance with intricate visual 'harmonies'), only this one will be actually danceable by humans. I'm excited about this one. It's going to look so cool.

Hollow Man (Daniel Amos): I'm hoping this will actually become a joint choreographic venture with myself and the other two choreographers on the dance team, the idea being that each of us choreographs our own part in a different discipline from the other two, and then we put the individual parts together on the stage. This would be an attempt to build on the haunting almost-discord of the song -- it looks amazing in my head, but it remains to be seen what real life will do to it...

Montana Sky (White Heart): I haven't touched this song in over a month. It started out slow anyway, but the actual dance was turning out rather nicely. I just seem to have lost my ambition for this one. I'd still like to finish it sometime, as it was shaping up to be really pretty (soft, gentle ballet trio), and I was already past the halfway point anyway...

Shedding The Mortal Coil (Daniel Amos): I kind of doubt this will ever get staged. It's bubblegum Junior Jazz One at its finest. But it's so much fun...
(Yes, the linked video does cut it off, but there's only like five more seconds in the song after that. Basically he holds the note for 'coil' and the guitar reverberates for a few more seconds.)

Going Public (Newsboys): Seriously, does this song not have 'tap dance' written all over it?

Answering Machine (Prodigal): I'm not seriously working on this (yet), but the other day I was brainstorming ideas for it and I think there's some potential for this one. This would be another tap dance.


Other stuff I've been doing...

Photography -- just did a snow photo shoot with my sister yesterday. I waited nearly a week for cloud cover before I finally gave up and figured I'd just have to make it work with the sun's harsh glare coming off the snow (before it all melted away). Those pictures had better have turned out (I haven't looked at them yet).

On a side note, I, unlike everyone else in this province, am LOVING the snow. We got a mild blizzard here last Thursday... it was awesome. Except for the people in the 100-car pileup, but it sounds like they were all pretty much okay anyway. (If the idiots in this province would just learn that the speed on the highway is 110, not 300 gazillion, this wouldn't have been a problem.) Since I'm on my soapbox anyway, listen Albertans, you have no right to complain. It's MARCH, people. March. You have no right to be whining about missing spring yet. For crying out loud, it's March! What do you expect? Crocuses in your underwear drawer? Spring around here comes in May. IT. HAPPENS. EVERY. YEAR. Do you people not pay attention?

*gets off soapbox*

*abruptly changes gears*

So to make a long story short, I just became aware of a really cool old abandoned house literally a two-minute drive from where I live. Can you say 'video/photo shoot location?' Only one problem -- it's being demolished in two and a half weeks. But I really, really want to get something artistic out of that house before it's destroyed and forgotten. There isn't too much there for a photo shoot, but it has the best music-video lighting ever, especially in the basement.

At first I was thinking of doing a 'music video' for the dance to the aforementioned Hollow Man. However, as I thought about the logistics of choreographing, perfecting, and shooting the whole thing in two weeks, I was forced to admit defeat. There is no way I'm going to be able to pull that off, even with the other two dancers on spring break. I kind of doubt I'll ever be able to not regret getting that committed to film while I had the chance -- that basement, that lighting, is so so perfect for the mood, the sound, the dance of Hollow Man. I had camera angles figured out and everything.

So now I'm considering (hopefully) the next best thing: an already-choreographed piece that requires only one dancer -- me. Eighth Wonder. It won't pull as much creative awesomeness out of that basement as Hollow Man would, but under such a tight deadline, it'll have to do. I just hope someday I'll find another basement as aesthetically brilliant as that one with less of a deadline on it.

There's really only one problem with doing Eighth Wonder in there -- well, two -- but both would have been present no matter what dance I picked. One is I need someone to run the camera. I know almost exactly what kind of camera work I want, but I also need to be doing the actual dance. (What I really need to do is clone myself. That would make this whole creating-art thing so much easier because I would know what I want and I would always be available the same time as I am and then I could be in two physical locations simultaneously.)

The second problem is the fact that the basement floor is unprotected concrete -- a bit of a dancer's nightmare, and especially for one who's already showing signs of knee trouble. (And guess what makes the lighting in that basement so amazing? Yep... the light-conducting properties of bare concrete.) I have a bit of a temporary floor solution in mind (though it might kill the lighting a bit), so if it's possible to get in there and get the footage at the exact angles I want without any superfluous messing around, I should hopefully come out of there mostly unscathed. But it's gotten me thinking -- at what level does safety trump aesthetics/perfect lighting/space/opportunity? For me, just me, that's one thing. If I want to be potentially stupid and trash my knees, that's my problem. But even when I was seriously considering doing Hollow Man, I couldn't get it out of my mind -- would it really have been fair to ask two other dancers to risk it?


The Twitter-friendly version of that wall of words? 'Creative brain is exploding.'

And that's what I've been doing lately. How about you?