The Musical From Afar and Chronic Indecisiveness

28 November 2015, 11.04pm.

Christmas musical weekend at my college. And I'm not there.

I see the pictures from my friends who are still there. I can almost smell the makeup and hairspray and plywood from the set, I can see the spotlights cutting through the artificial fog on the state-of-the-art set, I can still hear the voices of the school's best singers and performers, I can feel the angel robe draping over me, and I can still taste the apples we were provided with backstage.

How many times since I graduated have I dreamed about this place? Literally dreamed -- at least once a week I find myself back in the dorm hallway, overjoyed to be back. Invariably I find a friend or two and am disoriented when I find a freshman in a room that once held someone else. And then I wake up. Suddenly the nine-hour drive I thought was behind me is undone, and I'm still here in Alberta.

It wasn't school itself that I liked. I didn't exactly enjoy finishing out a ridiculously hectic semester by writing four papers in 36 hours. Oh sure, I loved some of the classes (all the performing ones, anyway -- musical theatre workshop and choir and dance and voice lessons), but mostly what I liked was performing. And in prairie Canada, that school was probably the best place to go to cut one's theatrical teeth. If I could go to that college without having to actually take history classes, that would almost be a dream come true -- something so good I might commit to never leaving.

So why am I not there this year? And why am I not sure if I'm going back next year?

First answer: money. College is not cheap. Especially when your $1800-a-semester meal plan is basically unusable to due the horrendous schedule and you end up spending even more money to buy food because you're not actually eating in the cafeteria.

Second answer: dance. Longtime readers know how much I love dance. I thought I could give it up -- and I committed to giving it up for two years when I went to college. Long story short, I didn't have to give it up entirely, but I did have to go from training at Advanced One to taking classes at Grade Three. And I lost a lot of stamina, a lot of technique, and a lot of the joy in my life. I've spent my year in Alberta so far overdosing on dance classes -- I'm currently taking the heaviest dance schedule I've ever attempted and I still feel so far behind my peers who kept training at the advanced level during my two-year absence. The stamina and technique and definitely the joy is back in my life, but the thing is, to return to college, to return to theatre, I have to give this up. Yes, there are some dance classes at the school, but the reality is that for all intents and purposes, I have to give up dance. I have to pick one or the other. I have to either go back to college, back to theatre and the life it infused into me after years of just being a shell and turn my back on dancing or I have to stay here, keep training at my actual skill level in dance and dying inside every time I see backstage pictures from the many performances that the school puts on every year.

I've been agonising over this decision ever since I realised this past semester how much I loved acting. And the pressure only got higher when the people around me, the people in my program and the people in my dorm started telling me that I should stay, that I should continue on for a Bachelor's degree in performing. I didn't know what to do with that. I'd never received such validation -- ever, in anything. Most of the time, people never notice me as a person, let alone any strengths I have.

And I'm going to end up hating myself, no matter what decision I make. It probably won't matter if I pick theatre or if I pick dance. I'm always going to be thinking, what if I had done the other thing...?

Music Day - Dancing On The Head Of The Serpent

I don't know how these guys do it. I really don't. How does a Swedish metal band write Sunday School lyrics with cheesy clichès and oddball lyric rhythms all over the place with illogical lyric construction in what is clearly not their native tongue and still manage to create songs that automatically make my day better?

Of course, by the time they recorded this song, Ulf Christiansson and company had a much better grip of the English language, but seriously, the idea of dancing on Satan's head is so ludicrous that nobody on this side of the ocean would even think of it, never mind actually write and record a song around it.

But in the hands of a band that performs with such exuberance and passion, the idea is fun rather than dumb. I mean, just listen to that bombastic keyboard riff and that bass and guitar chugging through the chorus and Ulf Christiansson's big voice belting it out like there's no tomorrow. These guys were out to praise Jesus and have the time. of. their. lives. doing it. Such fun is contagious. Maybe that's what's behind the appeal of their music. That and they were pretty fantastic musicians in their own right. These guys were such good players and they had so much fun playing that one can easily overlook the occasional awkward lyric.

Title: Dancing On The Head Of The Serpent

Artist: Jerusalem

Album: Dancing On The Head Of The Serpent

Year: 1987

Label: Lamb & Lion Records

iTunes here; YouTube here.

Party on, man.

NaNoWriMo Day 14 - The Story

I suppose I should post about the actual content of my novel.

It's turning out to be a church drama (which is actually kind of fun): hundred-year-old small-town old-school Baptist church with secrets.

The main character is called Natalie. She hosts a TV show that basically goes around Canada and investigates/covers ghost stories. She and her co-host Matt are sent to film an episode in a small Bible-belt town. Things get weird when it turns out to be the town in which Natalie spent the first twelve years of her life. And she'd never heard anything about a ghost.

They go to the town and find that unlike most ghosts, this one has no firm identity or even a set legend around it. No-one's ever actually seen anything more than its shadow, and there are three possibilities as to whose spirit it might be.

But Natalie's not focused on the strangeness of the ghost story. While on location, she finds out that her closest childhood friend, a musical prodigy, vanished eighteen years ago, and nobody ever found out what happened to her.

In conducting an unofficial investigation into Sonora's disappearance, she dredges up all kinds of ancient history, stuff the church and the community would like to forget about. There's the shooting death of a nine-year-old, the church elder caught in an affair, the attempt on the previous pastor's life, the 'prodigal daughter'... At first it just seems like the town had a seriously messed up past, but as Natalie digs deeper, she finds that Sonora is the epicentre of everything that's happened there in the past 35 years. And even though Sonora's long gone, it's not all over.

Not only has Natalie been accused of causing Sonora's (unproven) death, she's digging into secrets that the town has spent 35 years trying to hide and she's got a camera crew with her. The silence surrounding Sonora's entire life needs to be broken and only Natalie can do it -- but the same gun that killed Sonora's sister is setting its sights on her...


So how is it actually going?

Awful, to be honest. The bulk of my word count is primarily made up of fictional deacon meeting minutes and annual reports (the fact that these bits are the most interesting parts of my novel is a testimony to how much the overall novel sucks). I started the contest writing 5k a day and am now having a hard time stringing three words together. My brain is completely tapped out. I try to think about my novel and there are literally no thoughts in my head. My main character should be fun to write, but she has no real internal thought process. She just kind of 'does things.' She doesn't really 'think' in words and sentences and flowery metaphors like most of my characters in other stories, she just kind of evaluates the situation and takes action without putting it into words, even mentally. I never realised before how much I depend on my characters' long-winded flowery internal monologues to eat up word count until this year. Basically, I have to write 50k of straight-up actual plot, which apparently I've never truly done before. I've never had a problem with the DoRD (Department of Redundancy Department) until this year, and the sudden change this year is entirely because I have literally no more words, so I have my characters repeat everything three times and just change the wording each time.

In short: I actually really hate my novel. Not even in a joking sense. I seriously hate this novel. It has so much potential, but no feeling.


Stats time!
Official NaNoWriMo Goal For Day 14: 23,338 words
Current Word Count: 40,727 words
Mary Poppins References: 1

Daniel Amos References: 2
Number Of Character Smoke Breaks: 1
Number Of Characters Who Actually Smoke: 0
Bags Of Doritos Consumed: like 5 (those miniscule 'fun size' ones that have like five chips each)

NaNoWriMo Day 8: We Have Music!

So... Day 8 of National Novel Writing Month.

As I've lamented on this blog already, I had a ridiculous amount of trouble even thinking of an idea of what to write this year. Usually my problem is more like 'which of these 17 awesome ideas do I write this year?'

So this year, lacking any other ideas, I dug up a novel I started back in 2008 that had long since died of extensive family histories and minute geographical details (A.K.A. lack of ability to make the actual plot believable), gave it a chronological overhaul, revamped the main character's life, infused a plethora of juicy secrets, and decided that if I really absolutely had to, I could use this one for NaNoWriMo. All the time, of course, I was hoping for a much more exciting plot to come along.

Obviously, none ever came.

I came up with one heck of a backstory for a nonexistent story, but that was it. It was either my impossible ghost-mystery plot or my backstory-without-a-plot. I went with the ghost mystery.

One of my biggest hang-ups about this year was not knowing what my novel's 'soundtrack' should be. Often my novels are heavily inspired by music: last year's Kyrie came from Mr. Mister's song of the same name (although the Newsboys' Elle G. was another strong influence); Angel Falls (2013) was directly inspired by the Veil Of Ashes song; the plot of Chasm (2011) was entirely inspired by the Flyleaf song and a radio interview with Stryper, and so forth. And even in my novels that aren't named after songs, you can always tell what I was listening to that year just by reading the novel. And this year I had nothing. None of the music I listened to captured me at all. And even once I had a plot, I couldn't find music that fit. None of it felt right. I lifted the title from a Daniel Amos song, but even that song didn't fit the feel of the story. But I had no other ideas, so I had to use this intricate, impossible story-without-music.

It's funny how I always think I'm such a pantser (technical NaNoWriMo term for 'writer who makes crap up as they go along') until I actually attempt to do it and realise how much I suck at trusting my imagination. That said, I'm actually quite a long way ahead, but that was mostly because I hated my plot so much that I wanted to get away from it as soon as possible so I've been writing like a madwoman so I could finish it sooner. It's actually starting to pick up a bit (now that I've used up almost every single one of my plot points).

But today -- oh, today was a glorious day! for I decided, while writing, that I hadn't heard Steve Taylor's Hero in a while. And then his song Jenny. And then Sin For A Season. And somewhere between Jenny and Sin For A Season, I realised that those two songs perfectly described the two main players in the central conflict. (Of course, this happens when I'm over half-done the novel.)

Of course, by now my brain was in Steve Taylor mode, so I listened to two and a half entire albums. And nearly every single song applied to at least one character or one aspect of the situation.

So on this, my eighth day of panicking, I would just like to say:

Thanks, Steve Taylor. You saved my novel.

And now, stats time!

Official NaNoWriMo Goal For Day 8: 13,336 words

Current Word Count: 27,461 words
Number Of Characters Killed: 0 in story; like 5 in backstory
Number Of Song References: 0 (what is wrong with me?)
Number Of Doctor Who Episodes Watched: 4
Number Of Injured Wrists: 1
Snow Days: 0

Music Day - Little Crosses

(Apologies for the late post -- Internet was out yesterday.)

So the other day I was thinking, Man... I haven't seen a good Kickstarter project in a long time. Then I logged into Facebook that night and saw not one, not two, but FOUR different projects.

1. The Choir is reissuing what is widely referred to as their best album (Circle Slide) on vinyl.
2. The 77s are releasing like four of their early albums on vinyl.

3. Phil Keaggy's making a new album.
4. And Jerry Chamberlain of Daniel Amos fame is recording a solo album.

Jerry Chamberlain is perhaps one of my favourite guitarists. As I've said before on this blog, I'm not really into guitar, even as a listener. Just not my thing (plus I think it's way overused -- I'm looking at you, CCM industry). Yeah, I'm a rocker, but I listen to that for the keyboards and the bass.

But Jerry Chamberlain and his guitar have been a crucial part of Daniel Amos since its inception in the late 70's. He was a huge part in DA's shift from country to... whatever Doppelgänger actually is. He did leave the band for a time in the mid-80's (during which time his shoes were ably filled by Tim Chandler), but he returned to work alongside Chandler in the '90s sometime and I believe that's still the state of affairs in the band today.

So here's a Chamberlain-penned track from DA's seminal album Doppelgänger.

Title: Little Crosses
Artist: Daniel Amos
Album: Doppelgänger
Year: 1983
Label: Alarma Records and Tapes
iTunes here; YouTube here. Buy the (deluxe remastered two-disc edition) CD from the band here.

It's a brilliantly sarcastic jab at Christians' tendency to put measure their spirituality (or even our very salvation) with pictures of crosses at sunset and flowers after the rain and mustard seeds as necklace pendants and pewter fishes on their bumpers. There's a delicious inversion of Matthew 6:20 in the first verse. And it's set to rock music, so really, what's not to like?

Self-Doubt: The Things I Say

- I'm being a moron.

- This is the same thing I did last time. I'm just rehashing an old idea.

- No-one's going to come see this/want to be a part of this.

- I don't know what I even want to say, never mind how to say it.

- I'm not healthy enough.

- I'm too old. No-one will want me.

- There's no money in this.

- Everyone wants it 'fierce' (at best) or 'erotic' (at worst).

- I can't afford this.

- I'm so physically spent...

- I don't know if this is what God wants.

- I don't know if God can use this.

- Maybe I'm just being a prideful little prick and I'm not actually as good as I think I am.

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?

Music Day - Missing Person

Another piece of my childhood (and also one of the few songs on my list of songs to feature on Music Day that actually sort of applies to my life right now).

I think this was actually my introduction to Michael W. Smith. I was young -- about five -- when this was the big hit on Christian radio, and I mostly kept liking it out of nostalgia. But this is one of those MWS lyrics (and one of the very few mainstream CCM lyrics) that actually hints at the reality of being a less-than-perfect Christian whose life is not all together. Christian music needs this reminder in the worst way. We have so many songs (and, increasingly, films) that tell you 'come to Jesus and everything will be perfect,' but that's simply not true; and we as Christians need to stop perpetuating that lie. What's more, we need to stop believing it.

One of the biggest things I miss about not being ticked off at God is being able to tell people I'm praying for them. I feel like it's hypocritical for me to tell others I'm praying for them when I can't even pray for myself. But now I just feel so useless when my friends are having problems. I wish I could help -- but I feel blocked from doing the one thing that I can actually (physically) do.

Where did that person go? I used to pray about everything, all the time. I used to really believe prayer could move proverbial mountains. I used to pray for everyone who I knew needed something. Of course I would do anything I could physically as well, but if I couldn't do anything else, I would at least pray. And I don't even have that anymore. It's funny how much I miss it. But I don't know how to take it back.

There was a boy who had the faith to move a mountain
And like a child he would believe without a reason
Without a trace he disappeared into the void and
I've been searching for that missing person...

Title: Missing Person
Artist: Michael W. Smith
Album: Live The Life
Year: 1998
iTunes here; YouTube here.

Props to MWS for writing this. Most other artists could have written this song and it would have been horribly neglected (though it was so badly needed). But Michael W. Smith, with nearly two decades of CCM popularity under his belt, could write this song and get it on the radio -- despite the melancholy, 'lost' theme of the lyric -- simply because his name was attached to it. And it took off. The chorus absolutely soars. Probably one of the catchiest things mainstream CCM ever produced. Play this for anybody who listened to Christian radio in the late '90s and see if they don't belt out that chorus at the top of their lungs. The smooth melody, the yearning vocal, the vulnerable lyric (the verses are primarily spoken, adding to the vulnerable feel), the melancholy guitar riff, and even the electric organ accents could not be anything but a hit in Christian circles thirsty for something honest.

Music Day - Dig Here, Revisited

This Music Day will have a slightly different feel to it.
I featured this album once before, upon its release in June 2013. At that time in my life, I had just been accepted to college and I was in a whirlwind of terror as I realised my life was about to change very drastically (little did I know...). I had been a Daniel Amos fan for all of four months.

I liked the album quite a lot when it first came out. As a writer with a literary/poetic bent, I fell deeply in love with nearly every lyric. Terry Taylor has been writing songs professionally for over a quarter century and his ability to turn a phrase, paint a mental image, and/or juxtapose two concepts for maximum irony is very finely honed.

Even the musical backdrops captured my imagination. At that point in my life, I listened to music almost exclusively for the lyrics. If you had tried to get me into a song based on a 'really sweet guitar solo' or an 'awesome' chord progression in the bridge, well... not going to happen. I really didn't care about the music as long as it generally sounded cool as a whole. Of course, two years in a college music program has since utterly reformed the way I listen to songs, but even at the time I loved the music of this album. It was rich, it was lush, it was full-bodied, it was part Dr. Seuss, part brooding Van Gogh, part rock band, part orchestra.

Fast forward two years. Well, two and a half. A lot has happened... my beloved rattletrap gave up the ghost, I graduated from college with not only an Associate of Arts in music, but a lead role in a stage musical under my belt, I lost an aunt, an uncle, a cousin, and two good friends to death of various kinds. For the first time in my life, I have truly known heartache. Depression is one thing, heartache is another. They are intertwined, but I'm not sure they're quite the same thing.

Today I listened to this album for the first time since all those deaths. Different things catch my attention now, and other things that hit me before hit harder now. I had already noticed (how could anyone not?) that this album explores the topic of death quite a lot. On the brink of leaving my family for college two years ago, I thought I knew what that was -- the end of my old life of being surrounded by family, the end of free time. And although I'm back in Alberta with my family now, in a way I was right. Nothing is the same now as it was then, and it never will be.

To hear these lyrics again in this new reality that I can't get away from, this reality that half my family is essentially dead, hits a tender spot I walled off the night my mother texted me that my uncle left his wife:

You left me ruined on the inside
Taught me love's a wrecking crew...

I need to dream again...

So why should we take his big bitter pill
And wash it down with a bucket of our tears?

You hide Yourself away somewhere behind a thundercloud...

My heartbeat is the pounding of Your iron hand breaking me...

In my head
Here it comes
Ruthless hum of dread...

And the spot that still flames red with anger and pain from the night I begged God for a miracle and received only cold static in reply:

We were anxious for our prayers to be answered
But our angels were distracted and so slow...

The same rock that we stood on crushed us...

I've never been more alive

Now that I've died...

Another bad guy wins
More good friends die
They mounted up like eagles
Now they're dropping like flies...

In a pauper's field of dreams
I'm walking in between open-mouthed graves
Anxious to be fed...

Listening to this album today brought me a comfort that has eluded me for a year. It didn't fix anything -- my family is still in shambles. It was a temporary comfort. But there's that... I don't know, camaraderie? that comes from hearing your pain in words that someone else penned. It makes you feel not quite as alone.

Album: Dig Here Said The Angel
Artist: Daniel Amos
Year: 2013
Label: Independent release (Kickstarter-funded)
iTunes here; buy the CD from the band here. Buy the vinyl from the band here.
Lyrics for the album here (click on the song titles).

This Is How We Die

Written 29 September 2015, 11.38pm.

I mentioned in a recent post how all my creativity is gone. As if it was never there -- just gone. NaNoWriMo is coming up and although I'm coming up with the occasional one-sentence plot idea (which is almost always enough to get me a full-blown novel), none of them capture me. None of them offer characters, setting, motivation -- just a sentence of a potential plot with everything to offer and yet nothing. Usually I can't write fast enough in my notebook to keep up with the thing.

Part of it, I think, is that my novel last year (Kyrie) was so different, so intense, so poetic... it's far and away the best thing I have ever written. And I know that the next thing I write will not come close to that level. I like to think I'm okay with that -- maybe I am, maybe I'm not. But the really different thing is that even though I wrote it almost a year ago now, that book has never let me go. I have literally re-read it once every couple weeks ever since I finished it. I find myself needing to re-read it, even though I practically have it memorised, typos and all. Something about that book was the true me -- the one I've never really been able to find. It synthesized all my hopes and dreams and fear and pain and I keep coming back to it because it understands me like none of my other work has. Today, in fact, I wrote an epilogue to it (in typical Kate fashion, I didn't actually write an ending for it at the time because I couldn't think of one). Until today, I had not added a single word to that book. It's the original November 2014 rough draft that I keep re-reading.

But part of it, I think (and this now includes choreography and photography, not just writing), is that reality hit me this year. I was talking with a friend the other day and we were talking about how I often feel like I have my head in the clouds. And she said something along the line of, "Yeah... but you're at least aware of the real world." This year, though, I saw people die. I watched several marriages die, and nobody cared about them. (We should give funerals for marriages. A dead marriage kills the couple and any children and siblings(-in-law) and parents and nieces and nephews. When a person dies, it's one person. It's awful, of course. But when a marriage dies, it's akin to genocide.)

The thing is, yes, I was aware of reality, but I ran on sort of a parallel track -- a track with dreams and passion and love and hope. I touched the real world, but I wasn't locked into it. I could pull back when I felt I should. I could observe it and step in when I felt the occasion required it. Maybe it was escapism, but it kept me sane. And anyway, I wasn't pretending the real world didn't exist, I was just a step removed from all the hysteria that constantly seems to consume people (have you SEEN a Facebook news feed lately?). But now, with all those deaths in such quick succession with little to no warning, I can't get out of the real world. I can't step back into my imagination, my creative brain, my world of participation in the arts, no matter how hard I try. It's as if a door has been locked, and I'm on the wrong side of it without a spare key.

And today I realised -- this is how it happens.

This is how people become the soulless cold unfeeling drones that I so dreaded becoming. This is how it happens. People die -- real people; people you love. And then so does the artistic brain. I always thought people's spirits died when they went to college or got a 9-to-5 job. But now I've done both, and although both made my life significantly busier, it did not kill the spark of creativity, of love for life. The divorces in my extended family, however, did. Suddenly I realised nothing would ever be the same, there would always be someone missing, and no amount of art can replace them or bring them back and bridge the chasm between what should be and what is. So what's the point? Maybe there is none. (This is another one of those things which I swore I'd never say.) Maybe I just toil out the next mile at hand and I pretend the lively Kate never existed -- not in this world, because in a way, she never did. She was one step outside of it. And that one step represented an entire world of inspiration.

(Tangent: maybe that's why Kyrie resonates so much with me. The story takes place over the course of a year and a half, and it chronicles a college junior's friendship with a freshman named Kyrie, from the time he meets her till the moment of her death. It's sort of Mary Poppins-esque. And throughout the book -- mostly due to the first-person narrator -- Kyrie is often depicted as a tiny bit otherworldly. She, too, ran on a parallel track to the rest of the world.)