More Of The Dream

I guess I can now officially announce that I am choreographing my first-ever theatre musical!

This is a HUGE step, one that I was starting to think I would never get to take. This is a major milestone on my journey to fulfilling my lifelong dream.

I've done a couple of 'assistant choreographer' things, but this is the first one that is both 1. all mine (not 'assistant' or 'guest'), and 2. not also performed by me, myself, and I.

I remember being seventeen and my parents, my extended family, and my church despairing when I told them I wanted to be a choreographer. How they told me it was a pipe dream and I would be wasting my life and should just get a 'real job' (side note: the real job is trying to kill me. It has destroyed my body more in three years than dance EVER did in all twenty years put together). How hard I had to fight to get anybody (including performing arts profs) to take me seriously. How everybody thought I was too stiff and graceless (and don't forget stubborn and stupid) to be a dancer and would never amount to anything in the performing arts.

Here I am, lead choreographer for a musical theatre production.

Are there other, bigger steps further down the path that I want to take? Absolutely. But this is an important one, and this is one that not one person was convinced I would ever take.

Years ago, back when I was only just beginning to admit to myself that I felt a calling to be a choreographer, I named my Instagram account 'dancer by grace.' I saw myself as a dancer who was called and equipped by God's grace. And there are many stories (many of which are on this very blog) of God's provision along the way. I have not paid out-of-pocket for tap shoes since my first-ever pair in 2012. God led people to gift me the money for all the shoes since then. That's just one example.

They say that the foolish things of the world would shame the wise. I guess I am one of those foolish things.

The Drafts Of Yester-Decade

Recently I went way back into my blog drafts folder... and I mean way back. I often scroll back about 2-3 years, but this time I went all the way back to the very beginning, to the first couple of posts I wrote back in 2010 and never published... probably for the first time since I wrote them.

There was a lot of little stories of my life written there that I had forgotten about. And in a way those made me sad. I knew I was a brighter, happier person then, but reading these posts has put into sharp contrast just how much Brittney's and my cousin's deaths destroyed who I used to be... and who I wanted to be.

I still miss that person.

The other day I contacted an old college friend who I haven't spoken to since 2020, when I was banned by my in-laws from anything I used to do or to be. I've been getting tired of being locked in the prison of my own mind, and I'm starting to rebel. I've volunteered for a local theatre. I'm starting to listen to music again. I'm starting to text people back. I'm starting to read the Bible and watch church services again.

I want my life back.

That may never happen. In September, I sustained a back injury at work, and seven months later, it is causing more issues than it did the week it first happened.

I have not yet brought up the subject of future dance endeavours with my physiotherapist. They know I have a history of dance, but they haven't asked for details, and I haven't mentioned it. I haven't needed to -- there are still no dance opportunities here anyway.

I am a different person now than I was fourteen years ago, but I'm not convinced it's a good thing. Perhaps I made some decisions that looked stupid -- but honestly, I made those decisions from a place of deep trust, and I never felt more free and 'whole' than I did back when I was living out on a limb every day of my life.

The freedom and joy in those old posts are palpable, even after sitting on a dusty server somewhere for well over a decade. I have not felt that since before my uncle left my aunt in January 2015. I was 21 years old.

All these tragedies I never asked for ate up all the best years of my life. My body was a well-oiled machine, and my mind was sharp and quick. But it was all wasted as I spent those years drowning in an endless ocean of grief. Now the grief has dulled, but both my body and my mind are no longer what they were. I wasted all of that potential, all those years... on something that wasn't even my fault and was completely beyond my control. It's so unfair. It's so unfair.

I'll never be able to get those years back.

My Lack Of Social Skills Screws Me Over Yet Again

I'm stuck on Kyrie again, so I'm writing about it here because somehow writing stuff on my blog helps me process things (even more than writing them in my literal journal sometimes).

To recap: in February/March, I redid the entire timeline for Act I. I added subplots, I moved stuff around, I added quite a few scenes. (I am largely happy with Act II as-is, but Act I was... awful. I had trouble slogging through it during re-reading, and I wrote it.)

This weekend I finally made some real progress on the thing for the first time in ages. I wrote three whole scenes, which amounted to just over five thousand words of (hopefully) new and improved storytelling.

But now we are in a scene where multiple characters (as in more than three) have to socialise, and I am freezing up.

Before I was diagnosed with ADHD, this wouldn't have been a problem. I would probably have just made something up and assumed that was exactly how people socialise. But now -- after years of merely feeling vaguely out of place in social situations while trying to convince myself it was probably nothing -- I know that my brain is broken and that I am Not Like Other People.

This means I Do Not Know how Other People actually socialise.

At this moment, this scene feels like the literal scariest thing I will ever write. It's still early in the book, so readers might not be invested and willing to forgive mistakes yet. But here is where any semblance of normalcy will end, where my inability to be a Normal Person will be revealed in all its cringy starkness. This feels like no matter what I do, all the neurotypicals (you know, the people who can focus on reading books for any length of time) will feel all the awkwardness and feel immediately that this is not a 'normal' situation, and it's off-putting, and that I am not Like Them and am no longer worth their time, energy, or attention. Just like in real life.

Can I tell myself I will revise it later? Sure, but I won't believe myself. This is the second rewrite, and I know if I suck at writing this social situation now, odds are good that I'm still going to suck at it in a years' time.

I don't know to get through this. Even if I go work on something else first, at some point I am GOING to have to write this scene.

Music Day - She

Picture this.

North American Christian culture, 2003. At this time it was still a very common belief that video games of any kind were spawn of Satan himself. VeggieTales' Jonah movie was the only film that millions of Christian children had seen in theatres because all the others were demonic in some way (Harry Potter had magic, Star Wars had magic, The Lord of the Rings was simply 'too scary'...), and were you really a Christian if you didn't listen to Adventures In Odyssey every weeknight at seven o'clock?

Into this culture came a group of three women who found instant popularity with pre-teen girls with their inspiring, poppy, uplifting (in every sense of the word) melodies. Behind trendy, pop art album covers in bright purples, whites, yellows, and oranges, they sang catchy, bright songs with slick production. Were you really a Christian girl if you didn't have a ZOEgirl album in your CD wallet?

In 2003, ZOEgirl dropped their best -- sorry, third studio album, Different Kind Of Free. The pop sound had matured along with their listeners -- now solidly into their mid-teens -- and the record took on an acoustic R&B vibe (probably influenced by BeBe and CeCe Winans, Nicole C. Mullen, and Out Of Eden, who were all big names on Christian radio at the time). Even the bright colours of ZOEgirl's previous offerings were muted, with a palette of blues and greys decorating the album.

DKOF still offered uplifting, poppy lyrics in the first half of the album. The album kicked off with their trademark energetic songs of dedication to God. This is a simple goal, but difficult to execute well. Executing these well had always been ZOEgirl's strength.

But halfway through the album, the subject matter takes a wildly different turn. The electronic bass, staccato rhythm, and lower vocal register of Wait was the only warning the listeners got of the shift. It was skillfully subtle -- I doubt most people realised what Wait was about, as the topic of suicidal ideation was absolutely never touched in churches at the time -- but to those of us who knew, we knew. Those of us who already felt the cold tentacles of depression tightening around our souls and minds knew that song was for us.

In an artistic move both bizarre (given the subject matter) and necessary (given the parents of the target audience), the next song was perhaps the breeziest and most carefree song of ZOEgirl's entire career. Feel Alright was a stylistic, if less manic, throwback to Upside Down from their first album. It was also the song I skipped over the most (despite loving Upside Down when it first come out), because it was the least relatable and the least intellectually stimulating. But they had to put it there, because the following song was a doozy.

She was a slow burner for me. My best friend at the time, a year older than me and a pastor's daughter to boot, caught the significance of it immediately, but she had no way of expressing to me what she saw in her life and in the song. I found the song too slow and boring and brushed it off as album filler. But as our ways parted and I saw the absolute worst the evangelical church had to offer in the wake of my calling and my cousin's death, I began to see what she had seen... enough that when I found Daniel Amos' brilliant album Doppelgänger in 2013, I 'got it' immediately: the church of North America was extremely broken. In Doppelgänger, I could see the indictment of the church in the lyrics clearly. But ten years had passed by then, and I had forgotten about that soft little ZOEgirl song which had sharp teeth.

The other day, out of nowhere, my brain started feeding me lyrics: She's alone / Caught up in the undertow / Where it takes her no-one knows...

I started listening, and the rest of the lyrics arose from my dusty memories from over half my lifetime ago. Then I dug the track out of the bottom of my iTunes and listened to it for real.

What a ballsy song.

To release a song not only about teenage sex and pregnancy out of wedlock, but to also use that song to point the finger directly at the failings of the church on an album specifically targeted to young teenage girls would have been CCM PR suicide if not handled with kid gloves. So they tucked it in one of the 'filler' slots (it's track eight out of eleven), mellowed down the music so it wouldn't attract immediate attention, and trusted God would open the ears of those who needed to hear. My guess is that most listeners, like me, assumed it was a typical 'don't have sex before marriage' song (yes, those are a thing in CCM), and completely failed to see that they weren't placing the blame on the girl, but on the church that didn't have compassion on her.

She went to them for help

But blindly they cast the first stone

They could have taken her in

But instead they left her on her own

All alone...

And it worked. No feathers were ruffled, DKOF is still regarded as their best album, and ZOEgirl made another successful album before calling it quits.

I just... I am in awe if the finesse they needed to pull this off, especially at that time, and it worked. Nowadays critique on Christian culture in Christian music is more common (and still sorely needed), but at that time for a Christian band to make a song blaming the church instead of the girl was revolutionary. It was countercultural. It could have ended their careers. They could have been excommunicated from the church for a song like that, but they did it anyway. They hid a scathing critique in plain sight for those of us who needed the warning the most and they lived to tell the tale. And those teenagers in 2003 are now the ones calling out the hypocrisy of the evangelicals.

Maybe that's why I can never quite let this group go. I've always chalked it up to nostalgia (which is definitely a factor in my enduring love for them), but the more I listen with my jaded adult ears, the more I realise there was more to this little pop-vocal group than any of us realised.

Morning

I've never been a morning person. Even as a baby, my mother recounts stories of her staying up with me deep into the night -- not because I was crying, but because I was simply awake and wanted someone to play with. I was homeschooled and usually managed to push my wake-up time to ten or even eleven o'clock. College and work have both taught me how to get up early, but on my days off I've settled into a pattern of waking up at about nine... or, still early enough in the morning to actually call it morning.

And... it's not as bad as I used to think it was.

Mornings (on my days off) are peaceful. The cool light of morning is different from all other daylight, and it reminds me of the open skies and rolling fields of my childhood home (as well as that early-morning drive to dance classes). The desert heat is not yet at full force, so it's actually possible to breathe the air with little effort. My husband and I eat a calm, simple homemade breakfast -- sometimes eggs and hash browns, sometimes toast with jam.

I find myself most inspired to write in this light, with the music of decades gone by filling my ears.

After spending the morning and early afternoon on my creative projects, I have enough energy to do some household chores (I try to split these up over my days off, partly to conserve my very-limited mental energy and focus, and partly to lessen the strain on my injured back), and with those done early, I can actually focus on being with my husband for the latter part of the day rather than trying to cram creativity, housework, and relationship all into the precious few hours between supper and bedtime.

My desk has become my creative workspace. Recently I acquired a Croton plant and moved it along with the other two plants onto the 'shelf' above my desk. They won't be able to stay there through the summer, as two of them are desert plants and will very much NOT appreciate the air conditioning unit we put in this room at exactly their height, but for now, they are here above my head while I work, and they are reminding me of the colours and greenery of my childhood home (as opposed to the washed-out browns of this desert landscape). Our apartment doesn't get a lot of natural light, but the morning light seems to cover them well.

This desk is my morning sanctuary, whispering to me of a pink room (now blue, and my sister's instead of mine) that once cocooned me and let me fly quietly on the wings of creativity.

This morning is one of those mornings, and for just a fleeting hour or so, I am happy.