The Performer, The Mask

People who know me will say I'm honest to a fault. I'm not bragging, it's true. Ever since I was a kid, I loathed above anything else a liar. I would probably give more grace to a murderer than a liar. Of course, since I hated liars so much, as I grew up I came to understand that if I hated it in other people, it should absolutely not be present within me either. So I make the effort to be completely, sometimes overwhelmingly, honest (as longtime readers of this blog can attest). It's been a way of life for long enough that I suck at pretending anything.

And yet... my dream is a career in the arts. Hm.

This has been probably my single biggest barrier to the stage. I probably could be a fairly good singer/actress/dancer, if I could just emote. I have heard from so many dance teachers that I have great technique, but I need to smile more. They tell me that 'that's the first thing people notice,' but I could never understand that because when I watch someone on stage, I'm watching the body language. I'm watching the dazzling footwork, the graceful line of the neck and arms, the hand gestures, I'm hearing the rise and fall of their voice. I'm not looking at their face.

But it's becoming more apparent to me that even if I don't actually smile, I will still have to do something to infuse my dancing with emotion. I'm aware that my performing is flat -- in my head I'm jumping up and down, screaming with excitement over the mere act of dancing (heck, just being on the stage), but in my actual face and movements, it's all just sterile technique, carefully meted out according to the beat. And I've finally clued in to why it's so hard to add the emotion.

It's because of my (by now) hard-wired hatred for lying and deception. Yet the very nature of the stage is deception. We put on makeup, we wear period clothes, we jump the same height every time even if we're exhausted... it's all deception. Yes, the audience knows it's deception, but it's still deception. Honesty has been so hard-wired into me that even acting is difficult -- it's like it goes against everything in the universe. How do you pretend to be someone you're not? How do you pretend to feel something you're not?

I spent years disconnecting my outside from my inside and the result is that my body is an emotionless mask -- like the mannequin on the Doppelgänger artwork -- as the mind within whirs and buzzes like the electronics in Youth With A Machine. I spent years separating the two (silencing the truth rather than changing it -- so technically not lying), and now I've been trying to make them line up again so the honesty is richer and deeper. I still haven't figured that out. And then, when I perform, I'm expected to show emotions I don't feel and sometimes haven't shown outwardly in over a decade.

Dance, I think, is the hardest because you don't have words to fall back on. In a song, you have the lyrics to help fill in some of the blanks. In acting, you not only have your lines, you have dialogue between you and another person, which fleshes things out even more. But in dancing you're on your own, and often there isn't even a basic plotline written out anywhere like there is for a play or a film. You kind of have to make up your own. This had never even occurred to me until last autumn, and I still have no clue how to go about doing it since it was only mentioned in passing.

It seems strange to me that I would find this so hard. Since I know I can effectively separate my mind and my actions, why can't I take it one step further and raise the actions from a mere empty shell to something with intent -- even if it's the intent of a character?

Music Day - O Canada

In honour of our Canadian athletes in the Olympics... O Canada like you've never heard it before.

Title: O Canada
Artist: Angelica
Album: Rock, Stock, And Barrel
Year: 1991
Label: Intense Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

I'm hoping to post something more than music day soon... it won't be this weekend (this weekend is a total writeoff), but maybe the week after or something. I miss posting.

Music Day - Sympathy

Definitely my favourite Stryper song.

Title: Sympathy
Artist: Stryper
Album: No More Hell To Pay
Year: 2013
Label: Frontiers Records
iTunes here; official video on YouTube here.

I adore the harmony in the chorus. Michael Sweet is totally on form here -- I think I like his singing better now than his singing back in the eighties. It's still just as sweeping and powerful, but it doesn't sound as forced as it did then.

This is just a great straight-up rock song. It's still the Stryper sound, but it also sounds perfectly suited to today's sound. Sympathy would not be out of place on today's rock radio stations.

Music Day - The Ladder

I've been a fan of this man's work for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories involve listening to his Learning To Trust CD at age three. I had the thing memorised by the time I was five years old.

Somewhere around age ten (I'm not exactly sure), I found out that my dad owned a bunch of his record albums. At first I was shocked to find out there was more to this guy's career than Learning To Trust and Once In A Lifetime, but gave a couple of the albums a try.

7 particularly captured my attention. So much so that I listened to that record nearly every single day for about three years, and it has yet to get old. I'm not sure what it is about his work, but it is seriously impossible to overplay his stuff. When his album There I Go Again came out in 2002, I listened to that one multiple times a day, every day, for three years. I never got tired of it. I'm still not tired of it.

And not only does it not get old, there's still stuff to discover. Back in December 2012, when I was choreographing Early In The Morning (from Once In A Lifetime), I was already working on the ending -- the last chorus and the fadeout -- when suddenly I noticed the keyboard track for the first time. It was gorgeous and the song is all the richer for it. But what stunned me was the fact that I thought I knew this song so well. I'd known that song for the better part of twenty years, and I've never caught that keyboard line before.

7 is still a great album as well, and since I felt the need to include more David Meece on the blog (because if I'm not careful this will cease to become a blog and instead become a DA-fangirl page), we are hearing from it today. Plus, we all need more eighties keyboards in our lives anyway.

Title: The Ladder
Artist: David Meece
Album: 7
Year: 1985
Label: Myrrh
iTunes here; YouTube here.

I love the whole album. It's solid, from start to finish (the professional music critics will dispute that statement because of The Alien, but I've always had a soft spot for the synthetically eerie feel of that song). However, among all the wonderful eighties synth-pop on that album, all the songs from here that have been 'one of my favourites' at some point or another, this one has become the most consistent favourite. This is the song I keep singing in my head even after Side Two has finished. This is the song that pops into my head when I see the album cover. This is one of the prettiest on the album (aside from the closing track, which is admittedly more timeless).

It's a lovely song, gentle yet catchy. It's not slow, but it doesn't assault you with loud and crazy things. It's a really nice relaxing song. David Meece is so well-known for his perfect blend of classical, rock, and contemporary music that it's easy to lose sight of the fact that he's also a pretty darn good singer.

Standing
Watching the heavens at evening
Watching the day that is leaving the sky to the stars
How it shines...

Dude just summed up this post in four lines.

Whose Dream Is This Anyway?

The Edge Of The Dream.

I gave this blog this name mostly because of the White Heart song of the same name, but I justified it because I felt I was at the beginning of the journey to the dream God has placed in me -- the dream to dance/choreograph/be involved in the stage world.

But over the past couple of months, I have begun to question whether or not it is God's dream for me. There were quite a few little things that were sufficient to convince me two years ago that God created me to dance, but in the past year or so, all that has been thrown into question. Did God really place that dream in me? Or did I take it for myself and convince myself that He had given me this desire? Has my desire to be in the dance world filtered all of my experiences to such a point that I am unable to hear God saying, 'no, this isn't it'?

Over the last while, I keep hearing sermons and messages and things mentioning sacrifice. I always thought the idea of sacrifice in the Christian life, while not wrong as Scripture teaches it, has been grotesquely distorted by the churches of North America. Sacrifice, say the churches, is the law against cracking a smile. You cannot do anything you enjoy, if you don't think your life sucks, you haven't sacrificed enough. 'God created you for a purpose, whether you like it or not.' Sacrifice, say the Scriptures, is hard, but it is for your greater good, and one day you will look back and be thankful that you did because your life has been the richer and more enjoyable for it.

Which is correct? Am I supposed to be sacrificing the dream or sacrificing for the dream? Is this my dream or God's? How am I supposed to know?

I don't even get to find out the answer to this at my leisure. A huge opportunity has come up for me to be involved in an existing dance team, and the application deadline is Monday. Ordinarily I would jump at the chance. But the catch is, if I am accepted to this position, it means that I very likely will not see my family between August 2014 and April 2015. For most people my age, that's an incentive, not a stumbling block. But I'm odd one for my age and generation... As a homeschool graduate, I have spent literally all of my time with my family. As a result, we're pretty close. The two-month blocks between mod breaks here in college pushes my limit as it is -- can I really handle eight months? That and I'm the oldest of a rather young set of siblings... I feel an enormous responsibility to be there with them, to be a present sister, and instead I'm a nine-hour drive away. I've seen them for three weeks out of the past five months. I keep hearing how one of my sisters is practically gutted by my absence. I'm glad that she misses me, but on the other hand, I don't want to destroy her by prolonging the agony of separation. I remember being that age. I remember feeling unloved. And I didn't even have an older sister who left for college out-of-province. How much more will my history repeat itself in her life -- and how much more will it be amplified by my absence?

Which is worth more -- the family God put me in or the love for the stage that He has apparently given me? Which trumps which? Under what circumstances?

Music Day - Background

I always forget about this song until I listen to the album (which isn't very often because I tend to forget it exists -- too busy listening to Daniel Amos). But this is a really beautiful song. The stage imagery resonates with me in so many different ways. It's like if you were to take a different angle on Crumbächer's Understudy, strip away all the '80s orchestration and the harmonies, slow it down about ten times, and throw in a (conceptual) touch of their Royal Command Performance.

Title: Background (feat. Andy Mineo)

Artist: Lecrae

Album: Rehab

Year: 2010

Label: Reach Records

iTunes here; YouTube here.

In related news: Tedashii (Lecrae's labelmate) just announced today that a new album is on the way. I'm really interested for this one... Tedashii has gone through a lot (including the death of a child) since his last album came out in 2011. I get the feeling this album will be the Knowledge & Innocence of rap.

Music Day - Note To Anna

Trigger warning: references to suicide.

I've been boning up on '90s DA (because, you know, it's not like I have a thousand other things to do). There's a lot of hidden gold in there -- you don't really hear about DA through the '90s except for MotorCycle, and even then, that's as an album. Hardly anyone talks about the individual tracks on it.

So back to the story... I was reading lyrics from their '90s album on their website, and this song struck me. Actually, 'struck' isn't a strong enough word. This song makes my heart hurt.

I've been on both sides of this song -- not to the letter (because in that case I wouldn't even be typing this), but I've dangled off the ledge in both directions.

At first glance it appears to be from the perspective of a so-called 'suicide survivor,' that is, someone who knows someone who has committed suicide, and is now left trying to make sense of it. (DA themselves don't commit to one story or another on this song, but they give 'suicide' as a possibility. However, the 'suicide survivor' tone of the song appears to be metaphorical as well.)

On one hand it hurts because I remember those days when I was suicidal and I completely believed that no-one cared about me or would even notice if I did kill myself. To read what could have been a letter to me (if any of my friends had any inclination to poetry) was... heartbreaking, for lack of a better description. The song builds so perfectly and that second-last line... I could not save you... it breaks me. Because now, years later, I finally catch a fleeting glimpse of how the people around me do truly love me. I still can't touch it or hold it, but I see it, just for a moment, as I read that line in the context of the song.

On the other side, I remember only last year, when a very dear friend told me she had attempted suicide a few days earlier. I had known she was depressed, and I had known that she'd been having suicidal thoughts, but for her to stand in front of me and tell me she had deliberately overdosed on her medication... you can't help but begin to imagine what could have been. What could have been the last time I saw her alive. What sickening shock and numb tears would have been happening that day instead of her being able to talk to me, even to tell me this. What could have been the weight of knowing I couldn't save her... all of it is perfectly wrapped up in this song. If I had the poetry skills (and creativity) of Terry Scott Taylor, I could have written this but for God's grace on her -- and me -- that night.

(Also, the cello interlude is a beautifully melancholy touch.)

Title: Note To Anna
Artist: Daniel Amos
Album: Kalhoun
Year: 1991
Label: Frontline Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.
Full lyrics here.

Music Day - Broken Wings

Another album I discovered on the 500 Greatest Albums blog. I had initially bought only one song from iTunes, then found the vinyl in a record shop this summer. But in all the depression and preparation surrounding my then-imminent move to Saskatchewan, I never got to actually listen to it.

About a month ago, I randomly thought of the album again and found the video for this song on YouTube. I had seen it once before, and it had seemed unimpressive to me then. I don't know what changed, but when I watched it this time, it seemed somehow different. Perhaps, because of my restless mental wanderings since starting college, I was better able to understand the melancholy-yet-hopeful thinking, brooding mood the video was trying to convey.

When I came home for Christmas, listening to this album and adding it to my iPod was high on my to-do list. It turns out that the song's music video is not the whole sonic picture. Oh no. They edited out both the musical interlude before the third verse and the soaring melancholy hopeful ending.

I wish I could put words to the ending. There are no words. The words I used at the end of that last paragraph do not convey what it is, it's not even close. But there's nothing closer. You just have to hear it. It's so beautiful... soothing, peaceful. Close your eyes. Fly.

Title: Broken Wings
Artist: Mr. Mister
Album: Welcome To The Real World
Year: 1985
Label: RCA
iTunes here; LP version of the song on YouTube here, official video on YouTube here.

The Previous Post Was Too Hopeful, So I'm Writing This

(And also because there hasn't been a good rant on this blog in a while...)

My goal this year was to match and double my choreographic output from last year. That would mean creating twenty-six complete works in 2013. When college happened, I decided to lower the goal to just matching last year's output -- that is, thirteen dances. And right now I'm at eleven and a half. So basically I have twenty-two and a half hours to finish my current work and come up with another full dance by the time the year is over. And somewhere in there I have to figure out what I'm actually doing for National Choreography Month because I haven't even thought about that playlist yet...

All this would have been a much more attainable goal if I hadn't spent FIVE HOURS today on one page of glissades transitioning into waltz turns. I never want to see another glissade again in my life. Seriously, they're one of the easiest things in ballet and I spent FIVE HOURS trying to get the dumb sequence to work. Glissades are tricky little bastards... it doesn't matter how carefully you count them and notate them and think through all that has to happen, you always end up on the wrong foot. Always.

But that's beside the point. Point is, it's very likely (if not a given) I won't meet even the lowered goal. Therefore I hate myself right now (I know, I know, the Swirling Eddies say 'don't hate yourself'...). And there's this voice in the back of my head saying, if you hadn't gone and wasted four months of the year on college...

I could so easily have doubled last year. If it wasn't for college (and the dread associated with it as it approached), I could totally have done twenty-six dances this year. I did absolutely nothing during the actual semester because I was drowning in homework, and even before that, my depression over the prospect of going to college took me almost completely out of choreographic commission as soon as it sunk in that my final dance performance was going to be the one this past June. I haven't been on a good choreographic tear since May (and even then I was practically dying of strep throat, so I feel my work then wasn't as good as it could have been).

Remind me again why I'm blowing two (potentially) wildly creative years of my life in academia? It's not like I'm a great student and it's not like this degree is going to guarantee me a job.

This is so frustrating. So frustrating. I wanted to do so much this year. I wanted to have a solid choreographic repertoire by now, and I don't... because of this music degree. If that isn't irony, I don't know what is.

Shadows And Lights

I have started so many posts, trying to put into words what I'm learning and what I'm experiencing and the pain of being away for such large blocks of time. I have yet to successfully make a post that smoothly covers all of that without going on for pages and pages.

A lot of the past semester was the depths of despair. I was away from my family, studying for a degree (which I still see as a cop-out move for people not willing to just move on with their lives and I loathe myself for now being one of these idiots), forfeiting dance -- the love of my life, having absolutely zero time for even listening to music (never mind doing choreography), and finding out that everyone on the planet has more skill and talent than I do at anything you could possibly name.

From this there were only brief moments of respite. Most of them were packed into musical weekend. And even then, there was sadness mixed in with them (the first of which being the knowledge that no-one I knew was coming to see this, the biggest production I've ever been a part of).

See, the college puts on this Christmas musical every year. This thing is a big deal. I don't know if this is standard procedure, but this year they ran four shows in three days. There's a full orchestra, three choirs, dancing, pyro, an intricately detailed set, and, of course, the drama itself. Apparently this thing pulls crowds of 10,000 people some years.

I'm in the college choir, thus I was in the show. I found out two weeks before the show opened that there had been the option to audition to be a dancer. But I hadn't known that back in September when they were holding auditions or I would totally have been there. I hadn't auditioned for an acting role because I know I can't act, and I doubted I wouldn't end up in the madhouse under that kind of rehearsing/course schedule.

Opening night was painful for me. It felt like there was something wrong with the universe. I was up in the risers with the choir and we were singing wonderful beautiful arrangements of lovely songs which I did quite enjoy, but words can't describe looking down from the choir and seeing the dancers in white skimming across the front of the stage. It was so hard not to cry. All I could think was I should be down there with them.

But there were redeeming moments too. The general atmosphere of being backstage and onstage, entering and exiting, looking up and seeing the lights, looking out and seeing the crowd, waiting for the music's cue, the cheers of the audience after our most spectacular rendition of O Holy Night, costume changes, the smell of stage makeup, silence backstage as we waited to file on. Even the hurried snacks of apples or granola bars in between acts were like being at home. This is where I belong. Backstage, onstage, in costume, under the lights, surrounded by music, living on apples, granola bars, and the odd sandwich. This was the first time I'd ever been in a show that ran more than once, and that made it even better because then if you slip up in one performance, you can fix it in the next. There's always room for improvement, and by the time you reach the fourth show, you are rocking it. Plus, it means more stage time and backstage time and just more time in the performing world in general. When you only do one show, it's one afternoon/evening and that's it, you're done. It's really only a hiccup in the fabric of your real life, you don't have time to sink in to the performing world long enough to enjoy it.

It was enough to get me through the final month of the semester. It reminded me of my dream: the stage, the music, the dance.

If only I'm not too old and beaten down for the dream once I get out of college...