Sheeple

Two weeks ago my husband tested positive for COVID-19.

This meant I couldn't hug or kiss him or five days. But I'm grateful that it was only five days, and not a lifetime -- because the vaccine gave him a much higher chance of survival. I'm grateful he got COVID now, after he and I were double vaccinated, and not before, when it could have legitimately killed both of us.

It was terrifying seeing how sick he got, and I don't want to know how bad it could have been had he not been vaccinated. I wasn't feeling well either (but tested negative at first -- tested positive five days later), but he was truly in bad shape... and that was with the vaccine. I firmly believe that had he not been vaccinated, he would have died, and I would never get to hug or kiss him ever again. Five days is a long time, but a lifetime is even longer.

Call me a sheeple all you want, but the love of my life is alive today because of the vaccine. I and my crappy asthmatic lungs are alive because of the vaccine. My husband is alive and we still get to spend the rest of our lives together. If that makes me a sheeple, then I'm a sheeple. No regrets.

Music Day - Emotional Tourist

This is another one of those 'I can't believe I haven't featured this song' posts.

I got a CD with this song on it sent to me by an acquaintance in a fan group for obscure '80s music, while I was in college. It didn't take at first. I have already featured the one song that immediately stood out to me (here), but the rest of it was a slow burn. Despite this, I somehow kept returning to the album in the summer of 2018, and then, two days before M died, I randomly picked this song to warm up to one at my dance practice and choreographed almost the entire thing in two days. Something about the song grabbed my soul and dragged me along for the ride.

I'm just realising now as I think about it that this song probably got me through M's death. I was still at college, where I had already been emotionally abused for grieving after losing Brittney. I knew nobody was going to believe that one person could be unlucky enough to lose two 22-year-old friends within three years of each other. I knew I was going to be mocked and shamed for even talking about the fact that my very good friend had died.

I'm not good at stuffing feelings away. If I do, they become rage -- at everything. But I was completely immersed in an environment where there was nowhere to go. The only -- and I do mean the only -- refuge I had was dance. M died right when I was just coming off of the choreography high from this song, and I hyperfixated on both the song and the dance for it for the next year. It became my warmup dance for every practice, and I practiced every day. I've used it at dance auditions and submitted it to multiple competitions. It's probably the most personal dance I've ever choreographed.

Now for the actual song (hey, it only took me three paragraphs of personal ramblings before I remembered the point of this post instead of five...).

This starts out as what could be called a 'cheerful goodbye song.' It's upbeat with a lighthearted musical tone, even as the lyrics are contemplative and a little somber. One would never really notice unless they read them or really paid attention, given Scott's bright, energetic delivery, the beautifully interwoven guitar work, and the big drums.

Don't say the words goodbye, love

You'll break my heart in two

Rain clouds would fill the skies, love

And all because of you...

Such poetry. But in the very next breath we get a very different perspective.

Put me down as a lonesome traveler

Write me off as a minor character

I move, I leave no traces

Just a wave in a sea of faces...

The chorus solidifies the 'wandering heartbreaker' theme. Or, as one might put it, 'emotional tourist.' There's a melancholy tone here, but only if you're listening very closely.

In the second verse, Scott deftly transitions from the language of physical tourism to emotional tourism and continues to explore the theme of an emotional tourist -- always restless, never staying in one place -- by stealing a page from Daniel Amos' lyric sleeve for their ¡Alarma! album. Warzones, TV news, hungry children on the streets -- our protagonist sees them all within seconds, a rapid fire assault on both his consciousness and emotions. My heart feels as big as the ocean / My God, these are dangerous times...

How many times have I used that (first) phrase? I wrote an entire blog post about it years ago, how my heart felt like it was holding all the emotions of all the people in the world and how it felt like it was either going to explode, crush me, or strangle me.

This time, the chorus sounds weary. And in the bridge, we really see the compassion fatigue setting in... thank God I can change the channel.

The third chorus sounds sarcastic, aggressive, filled with pain. The protagonist has, for better or worse, claimed the title 'emotional tourist' as a defense to keep his battered soul from hurting anymore. The poem concludes with our protagonist repeatedly and desperately shouting thank God I can change the channel, as if saying it louder and more often will make all the problems in the world go away.

And I can relate.

In these hyperpoliticised COVID days, I think we can all relate.

Title: Emotional Tourist

Artist: Steve Scott

Album: Lost Horizons (I think? Steve Scott's music release history is very confusing)

Year: 1988 (maybe? see above)

iTunes here; YouTube here.

I'm just an emotional tourist

Call this a harlequin romance

So sad we couldn't make the connection

Call us victims of circumstance

Too bad we couldn't get it together

Put it down to a change in the weather

Someone said that there's nothing to fear except fear itself

Hey, I wish you were here...

Novel Update

And it's not even November.

Last month I made a timeline of events for Kyrie as I remembered it. However, I vaguely remembered deep questions/conversations about art being rather important to the story. I couldn't for the life of me remember these questions, so I went back to the original rough draft to find them so I could insert them into the timeline.

I haven't read the original unedited NaNoWriMo rough draft since probably 2018, if not before. I had read it many times before then, however, and since I tend to memorise things in writing easily, I thought I basically had it down pat.

I was shocked, then, to find that the story sketched out on the timeline and the story I was reading were two completely different stories.

The one in my timeline was about a seasoned performer, a cynic hardened by years of experience and a litany of tragedies. The one in the binder holding the printed rough draft was about a humble, gifted, passionate creature naught more than a child. If the main character was based on me, the rough draft is me in 2013, before everything happened, and the timeline is me now. And they are two very different people.

The problem is -- I like the rough draft better.

The literal only thing I dislike about it is the amount of exposition. And even then, I sort of feel like it fits the narrative voice of the character. It can't be because I'm attached to it -- I had completely forgotten many major scenes in the rough draft. Maybe this is why I've been having SO much trouble revising it -- because my soul knew that what I was coming up with was garbage in comparison to the original.

So now what? I can't possibly expect to publish a literal rough draft with a couple of dabs of paint here and there -- can I?

I really don't know where to go from here. Do I stop the rewrite altogether? Do I scrap the rewrite? If so, what do I replace it with? Is the rough draft really that good?

Have I mentioned I really, really hate novel revision?

Fade

Originally written 13 February 2022, 12.31pm.

As I near the tenth anniversary of my first completed piece of choreography, I've finally overcome my mental block (college trauma?) enough to choreograph a large group again.

I took a couple of choreography courses last year that, while helpful, kind of freaked me out as I saw only too clearly how big the gap was between the ideal and my actual output. I let those simmer and continued doing solos. I hate choreographing solos and I always have, but in college, when I was trying so desperately to prove myself to literally every director and teacher in the province because none of them could be bothered to see the potential in me, I resorted to solos because they were quick to create, easy to learn, and easy to film. I put out an astonishing amount of solo dance videos because I felt this invisible whip on my back to prove myself, to show that I was, in fact, dedicated and a hard worker (things that I was consistently told throughout college that I was not). Posting myself dancing new choreography every 2-3 days with the difficulty level increasing exponentially each time seemed to be the only way to show anybody that I was actually trying (those words still threaten to take me to a very dark place even as I type them). I got good at choreographing solos as a result, but I missed the complexity, attention to detail, and the sheer elation that goes into choreographing a big group number.

I've since been banned from social media by my in-laws because I'm not happy enough (and yes, I told them about the 'unfollow' button. They figured banning me, a grown adult, from expressing herself was easier and made more sense), so in many ways, I've reverted back to that seventeen-year-old notating reams of pages by hand alone in her bedroom where nobody ever saw some of the brilliant things she came up with because they could not possibly have cared less and she knew it. This has given me time to focus in on unattainably big groups again. After all, if nobody's going to see it, why not lean into the impossibility?

This is actually bringing some level of comfort. At the time that I was choreographing big groups, before college, I had a whole list of songs I loved that I wanted to choreograph to that I simply never got around to. And now I'm revisiting that list.

Frequent readers of this blog (are there even any left or are they all dead?) know that the bigger the song, the more I like it. I love songs filled up with harmonies and '80s keyboards and big drums and deep, big feelings. Songs with one solo (usually mediocre) singer and an acoustic guitar about one's boyfriend are so small and boring. I like songs that take up space, sonically and emotionally. These songs are also usually suited to choreography that also is big and takes up space -- like big group numbers. Many of my very favourite songs in the world either are group numbers I've already choreographed or they've been languishing in the 'big numbers' queue for a very long time.

And currently I'm working on one that in my mind, ranks right up there with Daniel Amos' Sanctuary as 1. one of the best songs of all time, full stop, and 2. one of the first songs I ever wanted to choreograph to.

I've come back to this one off and on over the years, threw out some ideas, dreamscraped, scribbled bits of notation on envelopes and receipts, couldn't find the theme, threw it out, and repeated the whole process several times. Last year it started to really arrest my attention, but I still couldn't find the vibe of the choreography. I knew it was jazz dance, but I couldn't see anything beyond that.

Then one day while biking, I realised that this was going to be an arm-led piece.

I hate arms. They've always been my weak spot as a dancer, and that shows in my choreography. Many times I leave the upper staves of my notation blank or just fill in standard classwork arms because I hate choreographing them so much and spend as little time as possible thinking about them. My choreography is typically very footwork-heavy because my brain just doesn't think in arms. But this time, that was the exact realisation that snapped the piece into focus. I choreographed a four-minute twelve-dancer piece in a week and a half because I focused on the arms rather than the legs.

This is the first large-group piece since Nachmo 2020, and before that the last one was 2016. The 2020 one was tap, which is a very different animal since it's less about formations and lines and more about rhythm and musicality. 2016 was the last soft-shoe large-group dance I've written. That's almost six years ago now. I don't remember much of the 2020 one because my college-trauma-induced memory loss wiped out that period of my life, but the 2016 one is a four and a half minute piece for sixteen people and I choreographed it start-to-finish in eight hours. And I loved every single second of it. There's a level of satisfaction that comes with creating a large group piece that simply does not exist in choreographing solos or duets.

This project brought me so much joy. I was actually sad when I finished it. Of course there was that rush of accomplishment, but I miss the joy of figuring it out. Maybe it's because I know I'm not likely to ever see it performed in real life, so my time with that piece is essentially done for the rest of my life.

At least I can still listen to the song and see it all in my head.