Nachmo, Day 2 - Joy

Yesterday I choreographed some 44 measures (in 4/4 time, so like 146 counts?). Didn't finish the song, but got just past halfway. And you what? I am absolutely happy with a minute and a half done on the first day, especially in tap dance (it's a lot easier to make ballet take up a lot of time than tap).

 

I can't even explain HOW FREAKING EXCITED I am for this year's choreography. I don't think I have ever been excited for Nachmo proper (M and I used to do a National Choreography Month -- which we dubbed NaChoreoMo -- in May every year, and I usually got way more hyped for that, as I was usually not dying of pneumonia at that time of year).

I'm excited about the show itself, for sure, but I'm also just really excited to be taking part in a creative challenge again. I haven't done one since NaNoWriMo 2023, and that one was really difficult/generally not-fun for a number of reasons.

I guess I forgot how much I love creative challenges, especially in a medium I'm currently 'feeling.' I was so high on life yesterday as I started this project that I wondered if that was what mania feels like. (No doubt my college professor would still have said I was being 'too sad.' But *beep* him. He has no emotional integrity, and you can't be a good artist without emotional integrity.)

 

Tonight I finished the first song of the show, and for the first time since 31 December 2022, I was able to actually add a song to my 'Completed Choreography' playlist (Sottovoce didn't use music, and I don't have the music for the two theatre shows I did in my iTunes library because both companies sent the music through ROCS ShowReady).

For trivia purposes... the playlist alone is now 130 songs, 8 hours and 10 minutes long. That's a lot of choreography, and that doesn't even include Sottovoce (24 minutes) and the theatre musicals. I could start the playlist when I arrive for my day job in the morning, and I still wouldn't reach the end of the playlist before it's time to clock out. That's so much music. That's so much choreography. I've accomplished so much, and I honestly feel like I'm just getting started.

I remember in February 2012 when I swore I would finish choreographing a dance to prove my mother wrong (about how I didn't want to choreograph 'bad enough'), and the elation I felt when I finally finished that piece (Sing Your Freedom) on 10 April. Look how far I've come. I just choreographed a tap dance in two days. At the time I choreographed Sing Your Freedom, I didn't even know how to tap dance.

I'm just so excited that I still get to do this. I'm so happy this is still a part of my life.

NaNoWriMo, Day 26 - An Announcement

I'm into the final 7k of what may be my final NaNoWriMo event. At least for a while.

It's been a solid run. I've written twenty novels out of this contest since 2008. Only a few of them are really beyond redemption (or at least would take more work than I'm willing to put in). Kyrie (2014) is obviously my favourite, but there are definitely others I will be revisiting when Kyrie is closer to true completion.

This farewell to NaNoWriMo would not be complete without a huge nod to Chris Baty, the founder, and his book No Plot? No Problem! which I borrowed from the library at age 14 -- not knowing it would change my life forever.

Chris Baty made writing accessible for those of us with ADHD. He made writing seem like madcap fun, not a tedious chore. He made it exciting. He gave it a deadline (and you know how great deadlines are for ADHDers). He made it a social activity.

Chris Baty revolutionised what writing was. He unlocked the gate of writing so the ADHDers, with all our whimsy and colour and verve, could have a seat at the table too. He gave writing ADHDers a voice. And I am so grateful for that. Without that zany book, and without that deadline, I would never have written anything. I would still be spinning my wheels, wondering what could have been if I had only managed to try writing just once.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not quitting writing altogether. I intend to rewrite Kyrie again starting in 2024. As mentioned above, there are other drafts lined up for once Kyrie is 'done.' I am so excited to actually work towards publication for some of these stories. I still intend to write blog posts and maybe the odd short story.

Maybe in a few years I'll revisit the possibility of NaNoWriMo. But I'll be taking an indefinite, likely multi-year, hiatus. Up till now, the only years I sat out were 2017 and 2020. But my job, my marriage, and my mental health have all suffered during the past few Novembers and I have decided it's time to recharge. The annual hit to my marriage especially is just not worth it.

Is it sad? Definitely. I loved this event and the madcap fun it brought into my life. I loved writing alongside M and then writing to keep her memory alive. But as much as I love M and will never forget her, 'keeping her memory alive' can't be the only reason to subject my marriage to this substantial strain every year. I have other art pieces dedicated to her that accomplish the same thing. And NaNoWriMo just isn't the same without her actually in it. Every year since her death has been a huge struggle, and I think at this point, five years later, I have to accept that NaNoWriMo will never again be the same amount of fun. Time does not heal all wounds. Not completely.

For the time being, I think I have gotten what I need to get out of this event. Maybe one day I'll return. Maybe I never will.

But for now, I will try to savour these last 7k as much as I can.

Honesty

3 April 2022, 5.37pm; 2 May 2022, 7.53pm.

I've always been a brutally honest person. This is probably one of the most obvious manifestations of my ADHD/autism and is definitely the neurodiverse trait that loses me the most friends/potential friends. I say exactly what I mean, not the social nicety beat-around-the-bush say-the-opposite-of-what-you-actually-mean code for what I mean.

This means, as someone with depression and an encyclopedia's worth of tragic backstory, I am VERY open and honest about depression and emotional pain. This led to my ex-church telling me God couldn't love me (this after telling me for eighteen years of my life that 'honesty is the best policy?' Make it make sense), as well as my program director deliberately sabotaging my Bachelor's degree -- I was 'too negative,' therefore he in his infinite wisdom decided I, as a deeply wounded and actively grieving person, was not worthy of holding a postsecondary degree and did everything in his power to make it so. While he did underestimate my stubbornness and sheer force of will, I would be lying if I said that he didn't erode my confidence.

The two nails in the coffin came from my now in-laws and one of my bridesmaids. In-law has decided to take offense with EVERYTHING I say. And I do mean everything. Anything I post online, handwrite, or say out loud is fair game. No matter what I say, they WILL find something 'wrong' with it. And their definition of 'wrong' is very different from the rest of the world's definition of 'wrong.' Oh, but they're never criticising... they're "only trying to help" and it's not their fault if I'm "too stubborn to let people help" me. If the definition of 'help' now means 'set fire to the Titanic on the way down,' then yes, they're doing a bang-up job.

The second one was someone who I thought was a very good friend. So much so that not only was she one of my bridesmaids in my very small wedding, my husband and I donated a fair amount of money to help with her medical expenses less than six months ago. Less than two months later, she blocked me with the excuse, 'my mental health is too fragile to deal with your problems.' So much for her assertion that she was always going to be there for me and that it was 'okay not to be okay.'

So I hid. I cut contact with literally everybody except my husband, my parents, my siblings, and one (1) friend. I essentially stopped using social media, and I kept work conversations strictly work-related. If nobody wanted to hear from the real me, they weren't going to. I even stopped talking to my in-laws except when absolutely necessary. It took almost thirty years, but I had finally gotten the message. I -- the true, authentic, real me -- was NOT wanted. Anywhere.

This worked for six months. I even stopped talking to the people who I hadn't actively cut off unless they talked to me first. I was just so tired of being rejected and guilt-tripped and bullied and abused just for being honest about myself and my experiences. I could feel my soul shriveling and dying, and I was quite literally praying every single day that God would just kill me. If I couldn't be honest, I didn't want to live anymore. I was actually dismayed when I realised that my sudden spells of vertigo were actually a concussion, not a malignant brain tumour as I had hoped.

Then it came out during an argument that I had been keeping how bad my mental health was from my husband. He was so upset he didn't speak to me for three days (as if that was going to make me want to die any less). Under threat of divorce, I promised that I would be honest, but warned him it wouldn't be pretty. He was so upset he agreed.

At this same time, I was actively working on an outline for Kyrie so I could maybe finally properly rewrite it. The ENTIRE plot of this story hinges on the main character's ruthless honesty. Turns out it's really hard to write about a brutally honest character when you can't be brutally honest yourself.

Then, I had the opportunity to sit in a zoom class with Dianne Walker -- the Dianne Walker, the Ella Fitzgerald of tap dance. And near the end she spent TWENTY MINUTES emphasizing how important it is for the tap dancer (really, the artist in general) to be honest, brutally honest, even if that's not the happiest place in the world.

When that class ended, I sat there and wrote in my journal for half an hour about how angry I was that I had let so many people beat the honesty -- beat the artist -- out of me. How angry I was at my in-laws especially for trying to run my thought life (funny how the 1984-style conspiracy theorists are the ones who are most concerned with controlling how people word things and how people are 'allowed' to think). Here is an excerpt from my initial reaction:

I spent five years of my life having the honesty gaslighted, shamed, and manipulated out of me at a ‘Christian’ performing arts college, of all places (after all, aren’t Christians supposed to be honest? isn’t art supposed to be honest?). My spirit suffered beyond what words can convey. It led to an eating disorder and a very troubled marriage. All I wanted was to die. If I could not be honest, then there was no other alternative. To live is to be honest. To share life with people is to be honest. All I ever wanted was to be honest and to share my life with honest people, in a spirit of giving, receiving, accomplishment, and growth. I knew as a young teen that honesty was paramount in art, but I let [college program director] and [church deacon] and [in-law] beat it out of me with their manipulation and vile, vicious words.

I used to say great art was beautiful, but now I say that great art is honest. My greatest art has come from honesty — not pain, specifically (though sometimes that is what I must be honest about), but honesty.

Sehnsucht, One More Time, Joy And Suffering, Kyrie, and, in a burgeoning way, Emotional Tourist all came from a raw and honest place and THOSE are my greatest accomplishments.

My creative output slowed not long after Brittney and my cousin died, and stopped entirely after M died. I thought it was the fact that they died that stopped the creativity, but now that I think about it, it wasn't the deaths themselves, it was how much I was bullied for openly grieving about their deaths that stopped it.

It's funny how people get so offended about grief. Not 'uncomfortable,' downright OFFENDED. I have had my career, my academic future, my friendships, and my marriage threatened by people who couldn't handle my honesty -- even if that includes honesty about grief or my mental illness. I don't understand that, because the very nature of honesty means you are honest at all times. 'Selective honesty' is not honesty -- that's manipulation.

Enough of that. I want to be an artist again. I want to live again, and to live is to be honest.

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...

Rising

Lately I've been doing daily stretch and strengthen exercises, mostly cobbled from dance classes over the years... my favourite and most influential teacher was always on the cutting edge of strength and conditioning programs to keep her dancers safe. She regularly set aside 15-30 minutes either at the beginning or the end of each class for strengthening exercises.

I had made many of these stretches part of my daily routine for several years in college, however, when I moved back to Alberta, depressed and thoroughly burnt out, everything went out the window except laying in bed until the afternoon sun covered me as well as the blankets. Then came the major life change called marriage (nobody tells you how STRESSFUL that is) and my first full-time job since before college, both of which sapped my energy and motivation to do literally anything. It was all I could do to go to work, make it through the day, and stagger back home and stare blankly at the television screen or my phone until bedtime.

Lately I've had some motivation returning, and I decided to bring back my daily stretches. This was also partly out of necessity, as my ankle is very angry at being made to stand on a concrete floor for 32 hours a week, no matter HOW good my shoes are, and is requiring either physio or total bedrest. Obviously physio is the option that keeps the bills paid, and many of the exercises that the doctor gave me are exactly the same ones that my dance teacher made us do years ago in class. This, then, leads quite naturally into the re-instation of a daily stretching program.

The most basic and most effective ankle strengthening exercise (as far as I know) is what we in ballet class call the rise. Rises on two feet and rises on one foot could take up as much as 45 minutes of class time -- different amounts, different combinations, different speeds. Students from our school were known locally for their incredible strength and confidence en pointe simply because we had so much ankle training in class. Once I fell off pointe (at a different school, after this one), and while I nearly broke my wrist, my ankles were completely unscathed (well, maybe not completely, otherwise I wouldn't need the physio now).

Rises, then, are the core of my strengthening exercises. I have sort of accidentally claimed a specific spot by the big picture window in the living room as the spot to do my exercises. On my days off, I typically do my exercises in the morning, so then the late morning winter light lies pale along the snow-lined road, reminding me of more carefree days gone by... the days when I would go to morning dance classes and do rises in classes with M, my sister, and other friends with whom I've more or less lost touch, with the calm, caring spirit of my teacher filling the room.

I would give almost anything in the world to have those days back. Of course I savoured them as much as I could while I was there -- knowing even at that young age how fleeting life is -- but I still somehow thought that it would never end, at least not completely. I thought that M would live a good long life and that my friends would stay in touch and that that school would continue turning out well-trained and deeply nurtured students for generations and that no matter how far away I traveled or for how long, I would always have a place at the barre in the sunlight.

Doing rises in front of that picture window takes me back to those days in the tiniest of ways -- strongly enough to bring tears to my eyes, but never strongly enough to be real. It breaks my heart every morning when I do rises, but I would rather remember those days than forget them. All I can do now is carry M and the spirit of my teacher and the school she gave to us for that short time in my heart and keep doing the rises that keep us connected.

NaNoWriMo - Day 5

Yesterday was a difficult day (cf. yesterday's post). The fact that I was writing about a character who had just lost her brother to death made this both better and worse at the same time.

I did, however, make 13k yesterday, putting me well ahead of the official Day 4 goal (6,668). I hit 5k on Day 1, and have been trying to build on that momentum ever since. I am not going to peter out like I did last year.

I've joined a couple of NaNoWriMo Discord groups, and while they don't exactly fill the massive void left by M, they help. It's better than doing it alone, and having everything virtual again this year also helps a lot -- then I don't have to leave the house after a long workday for a write-in; I can just pop in for a sprint here and there while chatting with my husband in between.

I've also been keeping track of my progress in my bullet journal. I made a graph just like the ones they used to have on the old NaNoWriMo site back in the good old days, and I've been colouring in progress bars every day and noting both my total word count and my daily word count. All the stats I ever cared about are all in one place again.

The story is actually moving fairly slowly, which, if I remember correctly, is a good sign. I think most of my better novels felt slow to start (but read back at a good pace later). At least I should have enough plot to make 50k without having to filibuster too much. Right now the hitman is harbouring an eight-year-old girl in his shed, trying to figure out how to get her to safety, and the police detective (the one who just lost her brother) has just decided to go back to her precinct and demand to work again (they told her to take two weeks' bereavement leave but she is having none of it). I haven't even mentioned the villain yet but I've got two central conflicts in motion.

Today is a slower writing day so far though. I haven't done less than 2500 words in a day yet this month, but I was writing mostly in the mornings before work (800-900 words) and on my lunch break (300-400). This morning, my alarm didn't go off so I slept in and didn't get that writing time in so I started the day some 800 words behind and I'm still trying to catch up. I haven't even written a thousand words yet today.

I've never gotten up early to write before. This is the first time I've done NaNoWriMo with an honest-to-goodness job that didn't have a writer-friendly commute built in. I wake up about an hour before work anyway, just so I have time to dress and put my hair up (I work in food service) and eat breakfast. I figured I could write a bit while eating breakfast and man has that ever paid off. I think the reason I can manage 800 words in roughly half an hour (if that) is because my inner editor is still sleeping and therefore my imagination gets away with a lot more than usual. Also, nobody else is up and distracting me/demanding I give them attention. I'm not going to do this on my days off, but it's a good way to get your quota when you work eight hours a day at a job that is not conducive to writing at work.

I'm actually kind of enjoying myself this time around. M still permeates this event for me, and I'm glad in a way. I don't want her spirit to ever leave my mind during NaNoWriMo. As much as it hurts to write alone, and as sad as it makes me, at least I still get to kind of spend time with her ghost every November. I wish more than almost anything that my dream from yesterday would become real and that she would come back and we could write more novels together and dance together more, and I'll probably never stop hoping that, not even when I'm ninety.

But at least this time her memory and the pain of missing her is a help to noveling, and not a hinderance like it was for 2018 and 2019. I'm enjoying the process of writing this time, for the first time since I wrote Kyrie. Maybe writing half-asleep in the morning is helping me get out of my own head and to trick myself into writing without criticising it for not being the next Kyrie. This story has promise, definitely, but it needs to be able to breathe first before I can force anything on it.

UPDATE: Just did a ten-minute sprint, and now I'm at 14,079. Hoping to break 15k by bedtime.

Joy, Dashed

I dreamt of M last night.

She was subdued -- had definitely gone through hell and back, but she was starting to recover and she was choreographing a dance. She showed me part of it. It was all so real. I was so overjoyed to see her again because it had been so long. It was so real that when I woke up I had forgotten that she's dead. And I had to re-learn and re-experience her death all over again. It's been throwing me off all day -- I was so excited that she was there. We were talking about choreography again, just like before.

I would give almost literally anything for a reunion like that in real life. I thought I really did have it in real life for just a few beautiful minutes it and then it was gone again. There aren't words for how gutting that is. To have everything you've ever hoped for right in front of you, speaking to you, dancing with you, the thing that you thought would never happen actually happening in that moment -- then have that joy ripped away from you again. Only this time it's worse, because you had finally just let yourself get genuinely excited and relax into the knowledge that she wasn't actually dead... only to find out that she did actually die. And you have to mourn it all over again, just as raw and fresh as the day it happened.

I would give so, so much for that reunion to be real.

The End Of Yet Another Era...

Last week I found out 'my' dance school (that I attended full time from 2009-2013 and then again 2015-16 and part time until Pandemic) is closing at the end of this month.

It hurts.

I've gone through so much change and upheaval already -- leaving my parents' picturesque house for good, leaving everything and everyone I ever knew, marriage to a man that in all honesty I barely knew before the ceremony... but I held onto that one constant that once the pandemic was over, once we could move out of the literal pit we currently live in (the town is in the bottom of a valley), I could go take Mrs. Clark's ballet class again and I could drive to class listening to White Heart as I looked at the streetlights and drive back home listening to Daniel Amos as I looked at the big dipper in the endless Alberta sky. That hope fueled me through much of this difficult first year of marriage and the pain of being separated from my friends and family back home. And now that hope to relive those wonderful days again, when everything was possible and everything was beautiful, is gone forever. I won't even get to take one last class at that studio. I don't even get to make that drive one last time.

I didn't know my last time was the last time. It's like a sudden death, in a small way.

I essentially quit dancing in the fall of 2019, despite being at my parents' house (read: within driving distance of the studio) due to the damage that my college professors did to me. They convinced me I wasn't good enough to even bother trying, so I stopped. I was too depressed to get out of bed, let alone go to class and feel even more inadequate about my abilities and myself as a person. I remember even texting the teacher and apologising for my patchy attendance, explaining that depression was kicking my butt. True to form, she was completely compassionate and understanding -- she always is. I thought I would come back. I really did.

I did up until last Sunday, when my sister told me the news.

I met M there, among other great people. I got my first pair of pointe shoes there. The teacher graciously watched and gave feedback on multiple choreography pieces I've done -- she even let me teach one to the ladies' class and let my sisters and I perform another in one of their shows. She hired my dad and I to build what turned out to be her last studio space. For most of my teen years, that class was my only joy in life. It quite literally kept me alive more than once. It wasn't just 'dance class,' it was that specific dance class, taught in that specific place by that specific person, surrounded by those specific classmates. It is irreplaceable, and now I can't go back. That dance school was quite literally a part of who I was, and with that gone -- among so many other things I've lost in the past two years -- it feels like my soul is untethered from me, floating aimlessly through space. I have no anchor left for it. I feel lost and alone in a world I don't recognise and never wanted to be in.

There are other dance classes and other studios. But dance will never, ever be the same again.

NaNoWriMo - Intro

National Novel Writing Month.

I started last year and petered out before I hit 20k. I was depressed, I was struggling both emotionally and in my marriage, the creative well was completely dry. The two years before that, I hit 50k only by pure determination and I hated every word I wrote. The year before that, I took a hiatus. The year before that, school commitments cut me off at 37k (though I did go back the next July and add enough to push the novel over 50k). The year before that was 2015 and I wrote 50k of a half-decent story in a fog of indescribable pain and grief. The year before that, I wrote Kyrie.

It's been seven years since I was able to enjoy NaNoWriMo. Seven years ago, M and Brittney were both still alive. Seven years ago, the world was pregnant with possibility and I had not yet become this broken, hardened, cynical, angry shell of the vibrant and hopeful person I used to be. Sometimes I wonder if it's even possible to write anymore. That Kate is so far removed from who I am now, and I wish that wasn't so. I miss who I used to be, and I don't know how to go back.

But we're going to try. Maybe that Kate hasn't completely died -- hope springs eternal, apparently.

So, about the story...

I got the seed of the idea from a 'plot bunnies' NaNoWriMo forum AGES ago. I think I still have the username written down somewhere, so that if I ever do publish it I can give credit where credit is due. As it stands now, the plot follows a police detective who's just lost her brother in a drive-by shooting. Said brother frequently volunteered at the youth drop-in centre run by the local megachurch, pastored by a larger-than-life man who has been a pillar in the community for several generations. Police detective is obviously not allowed to work her own brother's case and is instead redirected onto the case of a child reported missing by her foster parents. But the more she digs into the girl's case, the more names she recognises from her brother's life... She begins to suspect that if she can find the girl, she can find out who killed her brother. But of course, she can't take her suspicions to her superiors, because then she'll be taken off the girl's case and won't get another chance to bring his killer to justice.

It's a story with a few big twists. It's also very much in the same vein as my 2016 story -- a modern-day parable following a child who society would rather ignore, highlighting how backwards the world can be... the ones who should care and protect are the villains, and the 'evil' ones do the right thing.

I have a bone to pick with Christian evangelical leadership, and since I've been expressly forbidden to do so with other human beings or on social media, I'm going to do it in my own private novel that nobody will see for approximately 65 years (and that's if I do end up publishing the thing). Writing has long been my only safe place to say how I truly feel about things (that's actually how this blog started), and I guess that's going to continue. Maybe when I'm dead my best friend will send it off to a publisher and then people will understand. Or maybe it's just going to languish on my hard drive and in flashes in this year's NaNoWriMo forums and this blog. It has the potential to be a really good story, but I just don't want to face the inevitable backlash from my in-laws (my biological family has long since gotten used to my 'quirks' and have stopped trying to change me into a hyper-positive Barbie doll because they've recognised that it is literally NEVER going to happen). This story is for me, at least for right now.

I'm still scared to do this without M. I don't know how to write 50k without her (even though I've done it twice). I guess it's more that I don't know how to enjoy (or even have) the wild and crazy process without her right alongside me.

But I've noticed that my choreography after her death took on a richer emotional depth and resonance. They come fewer and farther between, but they are richer and deeper and seem to touch people more. Maybe that'll be the case for my writing too.

Do I think it's a good thing that M died? No, absolutely not. If I had to chose between writing better quality work and having her here, I would chose her. It's not fun to write good quality work all alone.

I have, however, recently joined a couple of NaNoWriMo Discord groups. I'll never, never, ever be able to replace M and her impact on my life, but maybe I can find a couple of comrades here.

I have enough plot. But do I have enough spirit?

Tune in next time...

Lost The Plot

Today would have been M's 25th birthday.

I've talked at length about how my writing and choreographic output just simply dried up after her death and I'm not sure either will ever come back.

I lost myself after she and Brittney died. I was such a highly creative person then, and without them to spur me on, I have zero motivation for anything. I made a half-hearted 'goals for 2021' list back in late January, and I have accomplished exactly none of them. In past years I would post huge goals on this very blog, and while I never accomplished all of them, I always managed a good chunk of them. But today I looked at that 2021 list and I realised I have no real reason to do any of that. I know the process of choreographing all those dances used to bring me joy, but now it feels pointless. Why create it? No-one will see it, no-one will like it, no-one will even care that it exists. Without M and Brittney to make the process exciting and crazy, even the journey isn't fun anymore. Maybe that was why I loved it back then -- the journey used to be fun and exciting, and it's not fun to do creative things alone and unsupported.

I feel adrift, numb, and so, so weary. I feel like there's nothing left for me to do, although the very fact that I'm still alive despite three (serious) attempts to not be should be proof alone that there is in fact something left for me to do. But right now I can't think what the world might need that somebody else couldn't do much better.

M was a breath of fresh air, bright, exuberant, energetic, passionate. Even on her bad days her drive and determination were inspiring, and she created so many opportunities for herself and for others. She was singlehandedly responsible for a lot of performances of my early choreography. I always wished I could be as driven and determined and successful as she was. And now I'm just too worn out from life to even try anymore. I want to follow her to where she is, where expectations don't strangle people, where souls don't silently die while their shells shuffle on. Why bother with anything here?

But if I'm meant to still do something, them what? And why? I don't know if I even have the energy to find the answer.

Happy birthday, M. I miss you so much.

100

Today I officially finished my 100th piece of choreography.

I actually thought this would happen much sooner. The early years of choreography were so prolific -- right up until college, I would literally choreograph for hours at a time, every single day. I think after the first year, I was up to 60-some completed projects. This obviously slowed down when college got into the mix, but I never truly stopped.

Until M died.

After that, I hit a wall, both in writing and in dance. M was my creative partner for both, and without her, life felt completely void of -- well, life. She died in September 2018, and in the next two years I choreographed maybe five pieces. All of them were like pulling teeth. She had been my only real source of choreographic inspiration and encouragement, and without that, there was no reason to push myself to keep creating these hack jobs, these robotic simulations of feeling that really meant nothing. All my work felt boring and repetitive.

I keep track of my completed choreography by putting the songs in an iTunes playlist and by entering the titles into a Pages document, along with the dates of completion. When I added that song to the playlist today and saw the little words '100 songs' at the bottom of the iTunes window, I felt immediately driven to message M and tell her about my milestone, like I did with most all my choreography/writing-related accomplishments.

But I couldn't. And there was no-one else still alive who would get how truly, fantastically exciting this was. M would have freaked out -- enthusiastic run-on sentences in all caps, loudly proclaiming my achievement, even though her output far outpaced mine. I never realised how much her zany excitement motivated me until it wasn't there anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I am proud of myself. It took nine years to get here, and for this chronic procrastinator to actually finish 100 pieces is a huge milestone. (Plus there's the saying that you have to do a thing a hundred times to be good at it... so I guess I've leveled up now?) I started seriously choreographing in earnest in an attempt to prove my mother wrong when she said I didn't want it enough. A hundred pieces -- some 1,100 hand-notated pages -- later, I'd like to think I've made my point. But my excitement is tempered by not being able to share it with the one person in my life who really cared about me choreographing stuff.

Here's to the next 100 pieces. Hopefully there's less loss to dance about.

Lightning In A Bottle

Lately my choreographic motivation has begun to awaken from its long slumber (of course it's when I don't have access to a studio to work stuff out in, but I'm not going to complain too much -- I'll take the ideas, please). To give it something to do, I've been notating the ballets that I sketched out but never notated, going back to 2017. (Don't worry, it's only like five pieces... I haven't choreographed much ballet since I started college.)

This included my solo for Terry Scott Taylor's heart-wrenching One More Time, choregraphed in two days in the immediate aftermath of M's death. I found my notes for the piece, but the ending seemed incomplete. I knew I had finished choreographing it, as I remembered performing it live on Instagram (to resounding silence, as nearly everybody at college either didn't give one crap about dance or didn't think I was talented enough to bother doing it) and filming the performance on my video camera at the same time. So tonight, I dug out that memory card and found the video.

And I was stunned.

It was filmed 2 October 2018, and I found two rehearsal takes from the day before. In 2018, I was starting my fourth year of college, having been told by my program director at the beginning of the school year that I had exactly one (1) chance to 'prove myself' (whatever that meant, and no, he did not deign to tell me) or he would be, and I quote, "done with you." I would routinely beat myself up -- mentally and physically -- in the studio and at home because I was so deeply, profoundly angry at myself for continually failing to measure up to his expectations -- whatever the hell they even were. I had yet to decode them after four years, but I felt no end stupid for not having done so, despite the fact that he was the one not communicating clearly. My self-confidence waned steadily throughout my time at college, as a direct result of the way he and the instructors under him treated me. Because of how much they hated me and my work, I began to hate the way I danced, and by extension, I hated myself. In a way, I was jealous of M for escaping this terrible world and all the pressure of perfection before I did. Now I had -- and still have -- to face all that belittling and pressure alone. After I performed/filmed this solo, I never watched it, knowing I would just hate myself more for not being a good enough dancer to justify doing that dance.

Today when I watched it, I saw this young woman with a grace and tenderness that I could only dream of even now. There's an absolutely luscious back bend in there -- I thought if I lived to be a hundred I could never be flexible enough to do something so beautiful. Even in the rehearsal videos she looked like a professional dancer. The courus were perfect. Her arms just floated, absolutely effortlessly. The lines were perfect -- I made a goal at the beginning of this year to work on my lines, but after seeing this video, I'm wondering if I really ever needed to work on them at all. There was a section in the 'performance' that did feel a bit more staccato than it was in rehearsal, but the pure artistry overshadowed that. I think it may have been the most beautiful ballet I have ever watched.

Did I just capture lightning in a bottle? Was it all just a fluke? Or was I really that good all along and nobody was decent enough to actually tell me? I choreographed, learned, and performed this piece in literally two days. This was before I learned an entire staging of Oklahoma! and the second acts of Jesus Christ Superstar and Chicago in essentially a week (side note, do all theatre companies literally spend five months on Act I and then stage/choreograph ALL of Act II in one three-hour rehearsal or is this just the companies I end up working with?).

I'm still deciding what to do with this footage. It is incredible -- to my eyes, anyway. But it's also rehearsal footage, and I don't like posting full rehearsals of pieces I do want to make into an official video someday -- spoilers, you know. I would love to film this properly, but I don't have access to any studio or even a space large enough to do it. So do I just sit on this footage and wait, possibly several more years, before I can properly film it? Then comes the question 'what if it's not as good?' I'm not getting any younger (or more flexible)...

Either way, it encouraged me so much. At least I can watch and enjoy this video. It touched my heart, it truly did. If I do decide to post it somewhere, I'll link it here.

Day 23: National Choreography Month

Finished the Queen song and now I'm getting back to my choreographic roots with a large-group White Heart number -- specifically Heaven Of My Heart (1993).

I think this one comes out of some of the emotional background of Who Wants To Live Forever -- that weight of nostalgia, that longing for another world. I'm still so tired of being here. I'm not suicidal, most of the time, just weary... this breathtaking, soul-scarring, heartbreaking, physically heavy weariness, this bone-crushing, mind-melting nostalgia for something I can hardly remember or perhaps never experienced. I feel like I don't belong here, and I want to go somewhere where I do... home -- wherever that even is anymore.

Locked in a sky so blue

Is a land made for me and you

And we're going there, but until the dream comes true

There's a secret place

So full of love and grace

When the world spins and breaks apart

I'm going to the other heaven of my heart...

I've been realising lately that the theme of a lot of my work (not just choreography) is the theme of escape. Not extreme, altered-reality escape -- not detaching oneself from one's emotions; more like escaping into a better reality. I spent so much time in my head because that was where my better worlds were -- the worlds in my head that I unlocked and sculpted with my fingers on the keyboard and my feet on a creaking wood floor. Maybe this song best describes what I've been doing with my artistic output all along. The themes were about escaping because that's what I have always wanted, more than anything -- to be able to reach the goodness that exists only just beyond the curtain of the physical, time-bound world. I can feel it, I sometimes see glimpses of it, but it can't come here, and, until my time comes, I can't go there either. I guess this is why songs like Terry Scott Taylor's Beyond The Wall Of Sleep (among others) resonate with me SO strongly -- at least there is one other person on the planet who sees it too. It's not just me.

And escape is not just the theme of my work, it's often the reason I create. I can go forward to heaven, or back to times I had with people who I will never see again until I can move forward to heaven -- and in the past few years, creating art has often done both at the same time. Choreographing this song specifically takes me back to the time when I still had viable dreams of choreographing and performing, and the friendship of people like M and Brittney. If I could lock myself in any year forever, it would be 2012. There was so much potential and hope in my life then. Now I'm just old and washed up. Doing this piece has really made me realise just how critical M's very existence was to my creative process. There's a duet section in this piece, and I still see her beside me in my mind's eye, doing the beats and turns as I write them down -- her endless energy and bright dramatic eyes. She wanted to escape too, and she was lucky enough to get it. I would be lying if I said I wasn't jealous. I've already choreographed a piece in her memory, but I think this one is in her memory too. No doubt everything I choreograph from now on will be.

I'm about a third of the way through the song now. It's a light, airy allegro piece, very ethereal, lots of arms and heads and a few floating turns... a lot like the music itself, energetic yet dream-like. I am LOVING choreographing the duet part (I still have a little bit of it to go), especially making them intertwine with each other and with White Heart's glorious harmonies. I can't put into words how much I wish M could dance this with me for real. I wish the curtain of time didn't seperate us.

There I go, trying to escape again.

My Room

Cleaning out my room at my parents' house for the final time.

Sure, I've moved away before, but before I always had the option of coming back. My possessions continued to reside here in this cheery pink room, under increasingly thick grey layers of dust and the occasional spiderweb. I never really truly had to move out of this room. I left for years at a time, but it was still my room.

But now I've just gotten married, and my sister is planning to take over my room. This requires me to clean it out for perhaps the first time ever. I've certainly straightened it up once or twice, but never truly deep-cleaned, and I've especially not had to pack it all away into storage at the same time. It's funny how few of my finds truly surprised me (apparently I pretty much knew exactly where everything was, despite some things not seeing the light of day for over a decade), yet when I dusted them off, only then did they bring back memories.

I'm a terribly, terribly sentimental person. I will keep a Staples receipt for pens and paperclips for nostalgic reasons, even though I know I will probably never look at it again. Part of the reason I had never truly cleaned out my room was because I was suffering so much loss already and I knew I couldn't bear to throw anything away. But now I'm forced to, and that, coupled with knowing this room is no longer my safe place anymore, is a very emotional process.

This room was where I cowered in fear from my mother's outbursts and listened to ABBA CDs nonstop on my headphones. This room was where I listened to Oilers hockey games and paced the carpet in the dark as I listened, working out some new plot idea. This room is where I would write all day long and late into the night on my old Windows XP machine with a 20GB hard drive (pretty sure the processor on that thing was measured in megahertz), or simply stare at the screensaver and daydream. This room was where I would sit on the floor after dance class and choreograph to Petra and White Heart, planning all sorts of dance shows with M. This room was where I sketched out revenge stories centering around the youth group that hated me. I've fallen asleep on the grey-pink carpet, I've made endless crochet and cross-stitch projects, I played hours of Polly Pocket with my sister, I've written over half a million words of ideas and prose, I've tap danced, I've even practiced a few ballet steps here. I've done so many self-portrait photoshoots, written so many blog posts, lost myself in so many dreams, cried so many silent but tortured tears. I moved into this room somewhere around 2003/2004, and it's been a home base for me ever since.

I found cards with greetings in both M's and Brittney's handwriting. I found a bear that my late grandfather gave me when I got baptised. I found mementos from a 2004 trip to see my now-deceased great-uncle and his wife in B.C. I found bookmarks my sister had made me, story ideas I'd sketched out on the back of church bulletins, and tickets for shows I'd performed in as a child. I even found a folder with all my work and costume designs and very early choreography for a book/dance company idea I had nursed for some three or four years in my early teens before joining the real world and realising that that exact particular idea was simply not feasible (it's not completely dead, though, the dream of a dance team and even some sections of choreography from that period still live on in my present work).

These are things that you never know the value of when you first receive them. This is another part of why I can't throw anything out. How could I have known on my 20th birthday when I received that card from M that she would be dead barely five years later? If I had thrown that card out two weeks later like I'm told 'normal people' always do, I would now have nothing left of the fierce woman who so often inspired and encouraged me. No-one else will ever exist with that exact handwriting, that exact way of wording things. And even if someone could forge it, they could never forge her personality, her essence, her spirit, her -- the things that all who knew her fell in love with.

Brittney was one of the very few people who was capable of being encouraging in writing. Sometimes her birthday cards to me were the only source of encouragement I would get for that entire year. This words-of-affirmation person had to scrape together all the encouragement she could, and sometimes it was contained only in the left-handed script of this one dear friend.

How could I know that my grandfather would only give me two gifts in the entire twenty-three years he knew me? Yes, I will never play with that stuffed bear, but my grandfather was a hardened, bitter man who rarely showed approval, let alone affection. That bear showed me what his gruff voice and distant actions never managed to do. I would rather remember that than simply replay the fading memory of his critical voice over and over in my head.

Memories fade. And these people meant far too much to me for me to justify callously tossing aside the things that remind me of them and their huge, huge impacts on my life. And because I never know which bright young life will disappear next, I can't afford to lose any of those memories. I learned when M died that just because something is statistically improbable (losing TWO best friends at age 22 in three years?), DOES NOT mean it's impossible. Especially if it's something bad. You know, like losing SEVEN people to death in four years; all but one under the age of 27. What's to say there won't be an eighth? Statistically, there should have been no more deaths in my life after Brittney for a good fifteen years, save maybe my grandfather due to his age and health. Yet there were five more in 1,461 days. Improbable, you say -- but it happened. It happened in real life, in my life. You truly never know. You can 'be positive' and 'not think about it now' and believe in the health and wealth of your friends all you want, but you truly. never. know. Nobody escapes the death of the ones they love the most. Nobody. (Except the ones who die young.)

(Side note: I am literally not even joking, iTunes just started playing Memories Fade by Tears For Fears. I did not plan this, and I am not making this up. I just started playing TFF and I had completely forgotten that song even existed.)

This room has been my safe haven through a lot of things, when there was no-one to talk to and no-one to go to. The golden light, amplified by the pink walls, seemed to bring a modicum of hope even on the darkest days of suicidal depression. The lone incandescent bulb that hung from the 2x10s that made up the upper floor above me lit the way to many a late-night story idea -- the spaceships that allowed me to travel through time and space, away from the pain of whatever situation I was in.

To not have even the option of spending a day alone in this room again -- it steals the breath from my chest. This room was one of my few constants in a world that insisted on dying away around me. It was always there, even after Brittney died and M died. It was my sanctuary when the world was against me (and let's be honest, it still is in many ways). I feel untethered without it, but it is time...
Another goodbye. It never gets easier.

Thank you, big pink room with the tree-dappled southern sunlight and the desks lining the walls, for all the good times and for sheltering me through all the bad times. Thank you for all the memories. Thank you for the safety and protection and inspiration you provided. I'll miss you something awful.

The First Empty Birthday... Again

You know, I had just gotten kind of used to celebrating Brittney's birthday without her. I had only just started to be sort-of okay. And now I have to start all over again, to re-learn to celebrate a birthday without the birthday girl here, to re-learn to hunker down and hold on on yet another date on the calendar -- there's so many of those now, and I'm not even thirty yet. I have to re-travel that entire path of grief, all those years of birthday parties that will never happen, and I have to re-condition myself to at least pretend to be okay again on yet another date when I'm really not.

Yet I'm not allowed to die. The four of you were, Brittney and Grandpa and my cousin and M, but somehow I'm not? How does that make sense? Today on your empty birthday, in some ways I wish it was mine. Why couldn't you take me with you? Why did you get to go and I had to stay here, in the shadowlands of the oxygen-dependent? You had so much more to offer than I ever have. Why leave me here? What could I possibly still do here that you couldn't have done a thousand times better? Am I just a cosmic punching bag and mere sweet death would be too good for me? How long -- how long must I watch my friends and family marry and have children and work in fields they enjoy and excel at their hobbies and I just watch a steady parade of caskets go past me, I watch my friends fade off my 'recent contacts' list because you can't text the dead. My still-surviving friends roll their eyes when I talk about stuff like grief and death because to them it's years away. They won't have to worry about that for another forty or so years yet. How have I seen more deaths than some sixty-year-olds? How is this fair? They got to at least enjoy their friendship. Mine are always cut short before we have a chance to really see how much we can create and explore together. Am I just destined to be companionless forever? How is that fair? How is any of this justified? Why do I have to be the only one?

I had only just begun to be able to put some of these questions out of my mind, at an uneasy rest. But now they're all back, and I'm so tired of not being able to ignore them and not being able to answer them.

And now I'm back at the beginning, once again. That first not-right, empty birthday. The first 'wish you were here' in a long, LONG neverending line -- given how long my mediocre existence will drag on at this rate, I might end up celebrating eighty of these empty birthdays, the days without you here, though that fact that you even have a birthday means that you were here, and it only emphasizes just how much you're not here anymore.

Tell Me You Know

The following was written 13 October 2018, three weeks after M's death. I was talking about this with someone not long ago and decided that yes, I am going to post this -- I believe it needs to be said.
This is the original, unedited post from that time.

If you know someone is grieving, please say something. Please acknowledge their existence. Even if you just say, 'I heard what happened. I'm so sorry.' Just tell me you know.

Three full weeks after my good friend's sudden death, I'm only just finding out now that all my professors and teachers found out the same day I did. They didn't know her at all -- the one person I told first told all of them. I don't mind all of them knowing... but I wish they would have said something to me. For three weeks I've been carrying this and while yes, I do have close friends who are checking in on me, it would still be helpful to know all the rest of you know and are in my corner. At least say 'I'm sorry...'

I don't know why this bothers me so much. I feel like they just let me struggle alone. I feel like they all said, 'ah, she'll be fine.' And maybe I will be -- but not in a void, and not at the moment. Don't ignore me now -- being ignored is exactly what leads to suicide in the first place. If you want to prevent other suicide deaths in the memory of this fantastically bright person you never knew, then make sure nobody slips through the cracks. Make sure nobody else feels abandoned, or ignored, or stigmatised.

Yes, I have been putting on a brave face. But that's exactly what I've been doing -- 'putting on' a brave face. It's not real, and it's exhausting -- trying to keep up this facade so you don't abandon me just because I'm grieving something beyond my control.



The following was a Facebook post I drafted that same week and never published. In retrospect, I wish I had. It won't have the same effect now because of the time that's passed between her death and the present day, but maybe it'll be helpful to you all in the future as your other friends lose people in tragic ways.

Can I rant for a second?

Let me be clear: I'm not looking for sympathy. I'm about to write the kind of post that ends up with a million people commenting stuff like 'wow thanks for sharing' because they feel obligated in some way to acknowledge it rather than because they actually feel anything. I'm telling you -- don't comment unless you actually mean it. I can tell from a mile away if you don't and it just makes everything awkward for both of us. I would prefer that you not comment at all rather than say something insincere or off-topic. I'm not looking for sympathy. I just want to say this.

(Also, trigger warning.)

So -- most of you apparently know by now that two weeks ago I lost a very good friend to suicide. This is the fourth person close to me that I've lost in three years and from past experience I knew that if I said one word about it, people were going to start coming out of the woodwork telling me how I'm not trying hard enough to get over it and how I was being 'too negative.' So for the past two weeks I have deliberately put on a brave face. I have said nothing. I have asked for nothing. I have continued to live my life as if everything was fine even though there's a MASSIVE hole in my heart. Believe me, I wanted to say something. I wanted to at least give people a heads-up to the pain I'm in, to explain why I might seem a little 'off.' But I knew people would think I was just milking for sympathy and they would resent me and treat me even worse so I kept my mouth shut.

And now I'm beginning to find out that literally EVERYONE around me found out the same day I did. I know it's a small town and rumours spread, and I honestly don't mind that people know -- but the thing is NOBODY, not one of these people, reached out to me to see how I was doing. Most of these people know I have a history of similar struggles. I would assume most of these people are aware that copycat suicide is a thing and be at least slightly concerned for my safety. But nobody checked in. Nobody even said, 'hey, I heard; I'm so sorry.' Even that would have made me feel supported. But now I just feel ignored and abandoned. You knew I was suffering and you turned a blind eye. And I think that almost hurts more than the knowledge that my immensely creative, fun-loving, talented, vivacious friend ended her own life.

You know who commits suicide? Those who feel alone and abandoned.

You know how I feel right now? Alone and abandoned.

Just SAY something. It doesn't have to be much. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just let me know you see me.

National Choreography Month Preview

Next up, on 'Things I Used To Do With M That I'll Never Be Able To Do With Her Again,' we have National Choreography Month (Nachmo for short).

Before she died, I had hoped to put together a longer show, telling a story through dance. Like maybe a half-hour or so. But now I have one day left to plan and I have no cohesive ideas. I have any number of thematic, abstract ideas, but no concrete plotline or way of connecting the different pieces or developing characters. Does it matter though? I'm a solo performer... no dance team or stage partner to create other characters on. Is it worth even trying to dream big? For as much as I rip on hipster music, I see why the market is so saturated with it -- there are no other options. For financial reasons it's impossible to put together a band, even if you could find anybody you work well with in today's individualistic culture. It's so hard to create good art when you're forced to do everything on your own.

I have a list of songs, of course -- more than usual actually. I literally just threw any and all potential song options into a playlist. I haven't even decided how many to shoot for. It looks like I'll have slightly more time this semester to get in the studio to work on stuff, so maybe I'll even have time to film something... but what? I have no location, minimal costume options, and no money to obtain either.

I really want to finish Bobby. This was my goal for last Nachmo actually, but I was horribly sick for a week and a half and then I had school to worry about. I didn't do a thing for Nachmo last year (January is a really horrible month for it actually).

Reckless might be my warmup piece. I have some solid ideas for it... just a fun large-group tap dance, in the vein of Uniform Of Youth (which I also haven't done yet, but really want to).

I would really love to film Tired Eyes. But I need much more flexibility. It's a very adage-like piece. I enjoy adage, I'm just kind of terrible at actually making it look good.

Mr X is another one that is like to film that I probably could film in the studio, come to think of it. It would definitely challenge my character development and storytelling both in just the one song. (It would also challenge my style -- I tend to be a loud, heavy, dig-in, 'trick' choreographer, and this piece lends itself to a lighter, more subdued/nuanced patter style.)

I have a general idea of a clap-beat for This Disco, but I'm not sure how to execute it without getting repetitive/stuck in a rut.

I've always wanted to try choreographing tap not in 4/4 time (I've done some ballet in 6/8 and 9/8, but never tap), and so far all I can come up with is Eatonwood Green. This has been on the to-choreograph list for quite a while, but I always chicken out. I have such a hard time finding the pocket in 3/4 time, even singing, never mind when you get into trying to make your feet subdivide it and make it sound good.

I actually pulled quite a bit of inspiration from my novel playlist for this past NaNoWriMo... mostly tap.

I half-choreographed Dream On this summer for Kyrie and would like to develop it more. I'm shying away from it though because it's going to be two solid minutes of allegro and for some reason I've been avoiding allegro. It just uses up my energy SO quickly and then it's hard to clean the dance when I can only do it a total of twice before I collapse. It feels like it's not even worth trying.

I wanted to finish and film Where Are You Christmas before Christmas this year -- for M's family, on their first Christmas without her -- but I had no location or costume, plus the choreography wasn't finished (though I think it's over halfway).

Down, like Beating Heart (which I still haven't filmed though I have the dance pretty well down and actually have a costume), could have come straight from my heart if I had any songwriting skill whatsoever. This could be another patter piece...

I've also wanted to choreograph Church Clothes for some time. It speaks to my experience with my former church. Also, I'm fascinated with the idea of tap dancing to rap music. I've experimented with it a bit (I've choreographed at least one other Lecrae song), but this one lends itself to more character development and straight-up sass.

I just looked in my idea binder and found notes on three or four long-form shows... I might need to look more closely at those. Maybe I could get a start on one of those at least. Filming would be a nightmare -- I already know two of them would require at least a dozen dancers -- but I might be able to get even a short show out of the other two. Something like Ayodele Casel's 'While I Have The Floor.' Two of them have been percolating for years now (mostly on the long drives between Alberta and Saskatchewan), but those are the ones that need an actual cast...

Post-NaNoWriMo Debrief

This was the hardest novel I think I've ever written.

Mind you, I don't particularly remember the trenches of writing my other novels. But usually I have a pretty good sense of which novels are decent and which are... not. And this one is trending to the latter camp.

First of all, my plot only percolated for about 36 hours before I started writing it (usually it's simmering in my brainpan for five or six months by the time November hits), so I felt like I didn't really know the story. It was like trying to eat an unripe fruit. It might have been good, but I was asking too much of it prematurely. My mystery story was a mystery even to me, and in fact, the plot grew murkier as the book went on. When I started the story I knew exactly who the murderer was, and by the time I hit 50k I had narrowed it down to three people. (No, that's not a typo.)

It was also hard writing without M. Even in the years when she didn't write a novel herself, she still commiserated with me as I wrote mine because she knew from the inside the madness that is writing a 50,000 word novel in thirty days and got, more than anybody else, the strange heady mix of elation and hilarity and angst that co-exists in the speed-novelist in those thirty days. But this year, I couldn't message her my characters' latest escapades and have her laugh along with me instead of taking a vague 'smile, nod, and back away slowly' approach like most everyone else does. I didn't have any of her insightful/funny comments on my NaNoWriMo Facebook posts. I never got to see her dramatic updates of her own novel. I didn't get to offer her ludicrous ideas and steal ridiculous plot points from her.

Artists -- true artists, who follow their calling with such passion and intensity -- are so rare already, and although we are often perceived as working alone, the fact is we can be pretty closely knit and when we lose one of our own, it's like taking a support beam out of a building. Although M and I worked on our novels in our own separate rooms, communicating almost exclusively online, she was integral in my own creative process and now that she's gone, my own work has grown paler, simply because she's not a part of my life anymore. They say it takes a village to raise a child, and I would also argue that it takes a village to create art. Take one person out of the picture, and the whole composition of the photo is altered. Colours are missing -- the blue eyes, the blonde hair, the bright clothing. The light is different -- the reflection of the sun on her face, the sparkle in her eyes. The shape is different -- one less figure, one less shadow, the loss of shape and symmetry, a literal hole where there used to be a whole fascinating personality. You can tell me to get over it because she was 'just' a friend all you want (as opposed to a spouse or a child), but the fact is, she coloured my life and by extension my artistic output, and now with one of the arteries of my art severed, my art -- and therefore I -- can't help but suffer.

I digress.

I did make 50k though. I completely filibustered the last 10k. I had about four plot points of any kind, so I basically dropped one in every 10k and then milked it in great repetitive word-padded detail for as long as conceivably possible (and then some) before dropping in the next tiny plot point and milking that cow absolutely dry and so on. I lost my motivation somewhere around the 25k mark and honestly it was sheer force of will that got the book to 50k (I'm not calling it 'done' because nothing's wrapped up because I don't know how to wrap it up). I have never been so thoroughly, consistently uninspired for a novel. Even my 2016 novel (which only made 37k that November) wasn't this difficult to write.

Maybe in eight months when I get around to re-reading it I'll feel differently about it, but right now I'm not looking forward to that day. I can't complain too much though... my main goal coming in was not to write an amazing book (although that would have been nice), it was to write 50k in a month for the first time since 2015. And I did that.

Next writing project: back to revising Kyrie.

Day 31

They tell you grief is weird and unpredictable. You'd think I'd know this already, having grieved so much in the last three or four years.

One month and one day since M's death, and this one is not at all like the others. With the others I sobbed uncontrollably for weeks. I spent months in a fit of rage -- how could this happen? -- and literally could not function for a long time. I completely stopped writing and choreographing -- only very recently have I begun to take these things up again.

But this time it doesn't hit me in tsunami waves like it did with my cousin and with Brittney. It's not a crushing heaviness like it was with my grandpa. It hits me in little needling moments, death by a thousand cuts. I have shed tears over M, but not all at once in full-blown sob sessions. The tears this time have been a collective, unobtrusive effort -- one or two at a time, and you'd miss them if you weren't looking directly at me and if the light wasn't just right.

Today I was thinking about one of my writing projects. There's a character who does highland dancing and of course my first, instinctive thought was, I'll ask M about highland stuff... and then I realised I can't. There was a window of opportunity -- years of it -- where I could have (if I had thought of this aspect of the character sooner), and I thought that window would stretch on forever, but it didn't and that somehow blindsided me.

The question that keeps coming to mind is not why? I know why -- or at least I have a pretty good idea. I've been on the edge of that cliff. The wind just happened to push me the other way. (For now.)

The recurring question is: is this how the story ends? All that enthusiasm and vigor and energy and life -- is this the apex? Does it all end here? Apparently it does -- it already has, thirty-one days ago -- but somehow I'm still haunted by this question. Is this really it? Is this really the end of her story? This? It feels so incomplete.

It scares me a little how quickly I've been able to just continue with my life, so unaffected. On one hand I'm waiting for it to bowl me over, and this is a possibility -- I tend to not fully process things immediately. It took me a full three years to process my cousin's death (how has it been over three years?), to return to some kind of normalcy after literal years of being almost literally paralysed with grief and rage. But at the same time, M's death has so far has almost zero effect on me, though I was much closer to her than I ever was to my cousin. Have I just grieved so much for others already that I'm out of grief? Have I spent all my life's emotions? Am I numb now?

And then the next little moment hits me that I'll never be able to tag her in another writing or dance post on Facebook, or I'll never be able to ask her a highland dance question, or I'll never be able to be a part of her dance shows again, or that we never did do that dance video I had started teaching her choreography for, or we'll never again spend 25 comments on her Facebook status talking about music, and I feel a tiny twinge of that huge hollow breathless ache that I know so well. It reassures me -- at least I'm feeling something -- but it also scares me. I only catch glimpses of it, but it seems somehow bigger than I remember it, and should the curtain be fully pulled back, I don't know if I can stand under that much nothingness.

Deleting Humans

I'm having such a hard time deleting you from my life.

I've done this before -- too many times. A text comes through and you just sort of mentally scratch another person off your list of friends to call when something terrible or wonderful happens. You mentally note another anniversary. You read the obituary. And they just sort of fade out of your life -- just gone, irrevocably gone, incommunicado, with no explanation. You go back home and don't happen to see them and you think maybe next time.

Sometimes the funeral helps make it real. But yours didn't. It's still not real. I was there, in the pew, and I heard your brother and your teacher and your friends give the eulogies. I heard -- I felt -- the thundering bagpipe lift a mournful cry to the autumn heavens. I watched the still lifes of your now-still life float by me, mere pixels on a projector screen, trying and failing to capture and contain and give back to us the experience and essence of your life, the vivacious energy you carried. I watched the singers' faces crinkle, I saw them clasp each other's hands, holding tightly -- eyes closed, ribcages shuddering -- knowing they knew they could no longer take yours. I heard your mother weeping, howling like no creature in the world ever could -- the haunted, hollow cry of a mother's gutted heart.

And then I went out into the balmy fall day, into the coloured leaves and the blue sky -- I somehow assumed all the colour would die when you did. Maybe that's why my heart doesn't feel it yet. The world is still too bright for you to not be in it. How could you possibly be gone if the sun is still shining? I would think it's some dramatic trick for attention, but the echo of your mother's visceral sobs in my memory tells me otherwise.

I look at the pictures I have of you -- thank goodness I knew you during my take-pictures-of-literally-EVERYTHING phase -- and I study your face and I can't reconcile the fact that I will never see it again in real life. I can't remember your voice, but I remember the words you'd use on our Facebook chats -- I'd recognise your writing voice again in a heartbeat.

If only you still had a heartbeat.

I still do -- why don't you? How is it possible that I'll never -- truly, never -- see you again? How can I look at that face in the pictures, the face of my friend, and delete it from my life? That's so cold, so heartless, so final -- even though you've already deleted it from my life. It seems impossible to just take it as fact that I will never hear from you again. There's always hope, isn't there? The prodigal always comes home, don't they? Love conquers all, doesn't it?

How then can I look at you, that wildly expressive face, and say definitively that hope is gone, and you'll never return, and my love for you -- our love for you -- could not conquer your demons? To do so is to admit defeat. It means I've given up on you and I can't find it in my heart to do that to you; you who have been through so much and meant so much to me. You're not gone -- I just haven't seen you in a while. Like so many others in my far-flung life. They haven't died, they're just geographically far away. Can't you be the same? Can't I run into you at some gala twenty years from now and revert to overexcited fourteen-year-olds again as we catch up on shows, and men, and recent projects? I'll be waiting for that day.

I'll be waiting a darn long time for that day.