Goals 2022

This is probably the hardest goals post I've made. Last year I skipped it entirely because pandemic, but this year CoVID-19 vaccines are a thing and things are opening up a little bit. And that means more opportunities are coming back.

So. Goals.

- National Choreography Month in January (more on that here). I'd ideally like to choreograph at least two pieces this month. I've almost certainly decided on one of them.

- 14 dances in 12 months. Managed 12 in 12 almost by accident in 2021, and I'd like to do that again this year... but up the challenge just a little bit. No sense getting stagnant and predictable.

- Finally publish my Patreon page that's literally done, just sitting and waiting to be published. I've been putting this off because I would first need to research if income from a Patreon page would affect my husband's benefits and that is a very daunting task, especially given the lack of communication we get from his case worker, not to mention the insufferably condescending attitude they give us when we finally do get through to them. But I'll need to publish this page, especially if I want to get the training necessary to pull off a full-length show by the time I'm thirty.

- Take some freakin dance classes. Do them online downstairs in the apartment laundry room if I have to.

- Make at least two dance films. Preferably at least one of them with more than one dancer (or at least with a dancer who isn't me).

- Do a live performance of my choreography somehow, somewhere. Enter stuff into showcases and competitions that I can find all over the province. Stretch goal: stage a full-length (possibly recital-style) show.

- Actually (re)-learn some of my dances. Make a learning/rep-building schedule and actually stick to it this time. (The main goal here is to have a full-length show at least learned, if not completely ready to stage, by the end of the year.)

I really don't know how I'm going to do this one. I've tried this every year since 2018 and it still hasn't stuck. I get frustrated with myself so easily and when I do manage to focus and silence the self-hatred long enough to actually learn a piece, I get bored of doing the same dances over and over. It's also really hard to practice consistently enough to learn rep when you have no consistent practice space and work saps all of your energy.

- Busk at the farmer's market this year. It's extra cash, plus practice. It's perfect -- if only I didn't have this crippling self-doubt (thanks, college) that makes me think literally everybody at the market is going to think I'm just an annoying untalented poser and an embarrassing waste of skin. (Plus, this might also throw a wrench into my husband's benefits and dealing with his case worker is not a fun time... see above.)

- Do at least one theatre show. Last time I performed onstage was February 2020 -- less than three weeks before the shutdown. Auditions are starting to open up, slowly. I did one this past spring, but then Alberta locked down again so the show got cancelled.

- Continue posting more on this blog. I'm liking the pace I've been doing lately and I'd like to keep that up. Some of my struggle with that is just a mental block that anything I post will just result in more emotional abuse from extended family. I've really pushed this blog back into hiding to avoid some of those repercussions, and that's okay. I would rather write freely on here than have to censor myself and my work to make random people happy.

- Do NaNoWriMo again in November. I'll have to come up with an idea though.

- Publish a short story.

- Write a short story in German.

- The perennial favourite: actually finish a Kyrie revision.

- Be more intentional about getting back into the Bible and praying. But more than that, actually implementing things that it says, like being thankful, not complaining, doing justly, loving mercy...

- Pick up an instrument. Either bass or piano. Learn enough to enjoy noodling. Don't get caught up expecting to become famous.

- Save up a $1000 emergency fund -- and then only touch it for ACTUAL emergencies. Remember that 'chips' or 'I forgot to take hamburger out of the freezer so I don't know what to do for dinner' is not an emergency.

- Make the sweater that I've been meaning to make for myself.

- Make birthday presents for all my siblings as needed.

We're already off to kind of a rough start, as I've managed to get a concussion and have missed all but two workdays of this pay period. We're just barely treading water financially, and now this. Is it madness to start dance classes on 8 January -- both from a concussion standpoint and a financial standpoint? Is my dream dead in the water -- again? I've already missed two years of dance, and I'm tired of not having it in my life. But can I really justify signing up for dance again when we're going to be late on our rent and I'm going to be getting less than $230 on my next paycheque?

I guess it's still better than the annual lung infection I used to get every single year at this time. Thanks, masks.

National Choreography Month - Preamble

Written 10 December 2021, 7.45pm.

In addition to individual dances, I also have varying full-length dance shows in varying stages of completion. There's the solo tap show (written loosely around a theme of escaping this world, but mostly created as a way to do the recital that my college program director cheated me out of doing -- which, by the way, means the college will not release my diploma to me because I 'didn't fulfil the program requirements.' Because the literal program director who KNEW I needed those credits for doing that recital hated me because I wasn't the sweet perfect little pushover he wanted. There's a whole rant here, but that's not the point of this post), there's the 'character vignettes' show, there's the shows I've written (or at least sketched out) based on Crumbächer's Escape From The Fallen Planet and Daniel Amos' Doppelgänger, there's the video album concept that's been written out for over half a decade and exists in pages of Benesh notation but not much else.

A few months ago, I had a flash of inspiration. I'm reluctant to share too much because it's the first pure idea I've had in a very long time, and I don't want to get caught up in trying to make it marketable like I do with everything else. It's a very close and personal topic for me, and the whole point is to celebrate that specific, personal experience, not to strike a common chord with the masses. It's a show directed to a very specific person and if nobody else gets it except that one person, I will still have succeeded.

I have already set a opening date. It's nearly five years into the future, but honestly I'll probably need that long to get my act together. I will need two children and one extremely good adult male dancer and one relatively simple-yet-large set piece.

But more than that, I need choreography.

I've been going through songs in all genres (even country, which I notoriously strongly dislike) and cherry-picking the best ones for this show. I'm shooting for roughly an hour and a half show, and I have 35 minutes of music already (and literally two full pages of music suggestions from my music nerd Facebook groups to listen through). I was just listening to the first rough iteration of the playlist tonight and it brought tears to my eyes and chills down my spine. This is shaping up really well -- I wasn't quite sure what to expect or how it would go, but I'm pleased at my preliminary progress so far.

So for Nachmo, I'm hoping to start choreographing these songs. I already have an idea of who's going to dance what (character-wise), and the staging is fairly simple -- which is exactly the point. Conveying this special relationship is absolutely key, and if all goes well for this one, I want to do another show for my husband -- and I've already got a bit of a playlist going for that one as well.

My problem will, as usual, more likely be in actually staging it rather than choreographing it. There's the part where I will have to learn the choreography; there's the part where I will have to find (audition?) dancers; the part where I will have to secure the venue and sell tickets -- unless I make it a private showing (which is also still on the table); the part where I will have to actually build the set and hire lighting and sound techs...

I'm trying not to focus on all that for the time being. I can almost guarantee that my biggest problem will be learning the choreography and rehearsing the dancers. And this doesn't happen until I can clear that hurdle.

There is a selfish part of me that wants to stage a show before I'm thirty. The show described above would, assuming it goes ahead on the projected date, happen when I'm thirty-two. I'm still considering staging the aforementioned 'escape' show before my thirtieth birthday (that's such a big number, good lord). It's already mostly choreographed, and if I can manage to conjure up enough discipline to get my lazy butt in the dance studio on any kind of regular basis (and convince my husband that I'm actually not avoiding him, just working on the dream that he 100% knew about from day one), I could theoretically learn it rather quickly. I'm not sure what venue I would use or if maybe I would just busk it and livestream it or something...although it would feel more official if it was in an actual theatre. If I still lived in Saskatchewan, I'd just book the theatre/practice space in town for a couple of nights. There is a theatre about a twenty minute drive away from where I live now... I've never seen it, nor do I know how much it costs to rent it, but that might be something to look into. There's a theatre being built in the town where I live, but there's no ETA on when that will be completed, plus I suspect that one will cost more to rent.

I'm getting off track here.

So basically, I want to start developing the first show idea during Nachmo this year. It'll take far longer than a month (at least a year, if not two) to fully choreograph, but I want to get a good head start.

The second show idea is already mostly choreographed -- I just have to finish up a few loose ends and then learn the whole thing. I was starting to learn chunks of it in fall 2020, before the second lockdown, but then in the six months of existing only in our tiny apartment or behind the coffeepots at work, I lost almost all of it. My goal with this one is to get it fully choreographed and learned by the end of the year (if not completely cleaned).

I also have a dance film in suspended animation that was supposed to happen this year, but the third lockdown put it on pause. That is still slated to go ahead in fall 2022. I still have to memorise and clean this one for myself, as well as for the other performers.

It's not lack of ideas that's holding me back, it's lack of resources. But for the month of January at least, I only have to focus on the one thing I can control, and that's the choreography itself.

NaNoWriMo Wrap-Up

Never did do a wrap up post, and now that I'm wildly late, here we go.

I achieved my goals: 1. I passed 50k, and 2. I enjoyed doing it.

That's it. Those were my goals.

I hadn't enjoyed writing at all since M died, so 'fun' was just as important to me this year as the standard 50k mark. I used to love writing and wanted to recapture that wonder of seeing the story come together. I would say I did that. Enough to make it to the 50,000-word mark by Day 24, and to finish out with 52,086 words.

The story turned out rather good. I think it came out differently than I expected, but I'm happy with the result. It's definitely good enough to revise and publish, but that day is a long, long way off. First Kyrie, and honestly IF that ever happens the next one in line is probably my 2016 novel Father's Delight. Then probably this one.

I was honestly scared I would never enjoy writing again. Having realised now that I still can brings both joy and sadness. Joy because my ability to escape into my art is not lost forever, but sadness because I'm not doing it with someone, and because it's different now. My autistic brain has yet to accept that 'different' doesn't mean 'bad' (it has the double whammy of having to process this concept in relation to Christmas too, and that's going about as well as this is).

I would still like to do NaNoWriMo next year. I don't think this is the last hurrah. But now I need to convince my brain to come up with more plots (this year's plot was inspired by a post on the NaNoWriMo 'plot bunnies' forum ages ago, and yes, I will try to credit the person should this actually ever get published.)

Music Day - Desert Rose

I really only have two criteria for Music Day posts: 1. It must be legally available for purchase; and 2. It should be a song that means a lot to me at the time of writing.

This is a song that I always glossed over. White Heart has so many loud, interesting complex songs that I was very confused by this ballad's immense popularity. If you mention the name 'White Heart' (to anybody who even knows who White Heart is), this is, nine times out of ten, the first song they mention. And that boggled my mind -- what about Let The Kingdom Come? What about Raging Of The Moon? What about Heaven Of My Heart? I do primarily listen for the lyrics more than the music, but in ten years of listening, I never 'got' the lyrics to this particular song.

Until now.

I am currently living in a VERY remote 'small town' that is literally an hour and a half drive from any other civilisation. There are no arts, no theatre, no dance classes, not even a freakin Staples. We've talked of moving but small tourist towns like this have a way of hiking grocery and gas prices so high that it is literally impossible to put together any kind of savings in order to actually do it (gas prices have been $1.43 a litre here since July; meanwhile my parents three hours north are zipping around on $1.17 gas. In the same province).

I don't have dance and I don't have money. I'm just watching my dream wither and die without practice. And I've been crying out to God, asking why He gave me this dream only to take it away again; terrified that I'm going to die in this literal hole in the ground, completely forgotten. I'm terrified of proving my program director right when he said I would never amount to anything.

Is this one of those desert experiences that so many people in the Bible went through -- Moses, the Israelites, Elijah, Jesus...? Is there still some important thing I'm supposed to do forty years from now and I just have to go through the motions until then?

I still feel angry and ignored sometimes when I think about how Brittney and M and my cousin died and I'm still here. It's not survivor's guilt so much as it is jealousy. They already live in a place where mercy is unreceipted, but I'm not lucky enough to get that chance. Given the choice between life and death, I would absolutely pick death. I'm not suicidal, per se, but I wouldn't fight death if it came for me. This world is not my home, and I want to go home. I don't even really know what 'home' is, but I know this world isn't it. I'm just so weary of life here.

And it's hard not to despair completely when all you see is the desert rising up on all sides -- literally.

(Forgot I was supposed to be doing a Music Day post. Pretending those last five paragraphs never happened.)

The song opens with a mellow but very classic '80s keyboard intro that hints at some of the haunting woodwind flavours that the band would explore in more depth on their next album Tales Of Wonder. And the tender, clear, angelic voice of Rick Florian (who I still maintain in the greatest singer to walk the face of the earth, even after five years of listening to music of all eras and genres while acquiring a BA in Music) comes in, painting a picture of an ocean of featureless sand and the tiny beauty drowning in it.

And you wonder

You wonder

Can you last much longer

This cloud you live under

Will it cover you?

The chorus features White Heart at their band-harmony peak. Harmony was something that White Heart always excelled at (their best-known line-ups featured a minimum of four competent vocalists), and it shimmers here, floating along on that bed of gentle keyboard that Mark Gersmehl weaves throughout the song.

Sometimes holiness

Can seem like emptiness

When you feel the whole world's laughing eyes

This is the part that resonates with me. I feel abandoned, alone, empty, tossed to the side, unwanted, unneeded, and useless. I feel like I and my life have been wasted and I'm just a shell of all my old dreams and potential just shuffling around waiting to die.

After the second chorus, the heretofore muted harmonies go from backdrop to centre stage, filling the song with layers and that beautiful '80s 'big' production. Chris McHugh's fantastic drums go a long way here too, and the effect is so lush and rich that it was several years of listening to this album non-stop (because of the title track and Storyline) before I realised that there isn't actually a verse here, only vocalising and a bit of vamping from Florian. (They pull off the same stunt in their song Let The Kingdom Come from their previous album, but that time they did it by distracting the listener with truly epic guitars, giant drums, and energetic rock vocals.)

Title: Desert Rose

Artist: White Heart

Album: Powerhouse

Year: 1990

Label: Sparrow Records

iTunes here; YouTube here.

Heaven knows

Heaven knows

He will hold your tender heart

Oh desert rose...