Music Day - Elle G.

This has been running through my head for a week. As the green leaves turn orange and yellow and swirl around below my window and the grey clouds of the approaching winter hang over town, this song weaves its way around the inside of my head, adding a melancholy melody to the chilled wind whipping my hair around my face.

I miss my family and friends so much. I miss the forays to the mall and to antique shops, having time just to have fun and to slow things down. I miss the laughs of my sisters and the faces of my brothers (and vice versa). I miss going to church and knowing everybody there. I miss driving twenty minutes to anywhere during twilight, alone, singing. I miss the hugs from my three closest friends at church, every week. I miss doing choreography, without the shadowed pressure of 'you know you have a paper to write...' I miss telling my mother everything there is to know about my favourite bands, even though she doesn't seem to really care. I miss working with my dad in the blasting sun on the hottest day of the year, shingling the largest roof in Canada. I miss being able to quote Daniel Amos songs and not having to explain what I'm quoting and why I think it's so dad-blamed funny. I miss saying 'White Heart' and people knowing who I'm talking about. I miss hearing Petra playing from other rooms in the house rather than just mine. I miss having an unobstructed view of the sunset every night. I miss people understanding my peculiar brand of sarcasm.

This song touches the same feeling (though deeper and darker than mine). It is perhaps the most beautiful song the Newsboys ever recorded.

Title: Elle G.
Artist: Newsboys
Album: Going Public
Year: 1994
Label: Star Song
iTunes here; YouTube here. (For interest's sake, listen to co-songwriter Steve Taylor's live take on it here.)

I am comforted slightly by the fact that I still see the dancing. As I listen to this song, I still see choreography in my mind, the way it's always been. I guess I shouldn't be surprised... I've been doing this in my head since I was seven. But somehow I thought that I might lose the capability since I haven't had the chance to choreograph anything since the beginning of August.

I've sort of been singing this song to myself here from myself in Alberta -- you can't imagine the guilt I feel in leaving. Most of my siblings are still so young. I feel terrible for leaving them. Sure, I'll be back for Christmas and for the summer, but what is that? What is that when we will be apart for Thanksgiving and the crucial atmospheric weeks leading up to Christmas and depending when Easter falls (I haven't checked), that too?

Silence all
Nobody breathe
How in the world could you just leave?

I feel like I left everything for this, and the stupid thing is I don't even know why. God called me here, so there must be a purpose, but so far I don't see anything that was worth leaving my family for. Not for two years. The people here are wonderful and funny, but though several of them remind me of my family, they will never replace them.

Thumbs out on a desert road I am told
Leads to nowhere...

Maybe this world is a barren place for a soul
Prone to get lost
But heaven still hounds from the smallest sounds to the cries
Of the storm-tossed...

National Choreography Month Recap, Days 21 - 25

Crazy couple of days around here. Last night the Oilers played the craziest hockey game I've heard in a while. Down 1-0 with just over a minute to go in the game and Nugent-Hopkins scores -- and then it gets called back due to a totally ridiculous 'goaltender interference' call.

And then with 4.7 seconds left, Yakupov scores. The game goes to overtime. (Or, as Jack Michaels called it: 'ooooooooooo-ver-time!')

And then Sam Ganger (remember him?) scores the winner.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Oilers-hating-referees. Way to almost cause a riot.

Anyway.

Last post, I had a just-barely-attainable goal on the National Choreography Month side of things: Finish Fly Eagle Fly.

So Monday morning (Day 21) I woke up, ate breakfast, then sat down and began composing. I worked more or less until six pm, then had dinner and went for Bible study in town. At this point I had five measures (phrases, bars, whatever... I'm a choreographer, not a musician) left in the song. Assuming I got back home at about ten or ten-thirty, I should easily be able to finish by midnight, giving me a full nine days to devote to The Dance.

So I went to Bible study, got to see a friend who'd kind of dropped off the face of the earth for nearly a year, witnessed a heck of a discussion on the work of the Holy Spirit within His people, accidentally threw a wrench into the 'college and career' program plans they've been working on for two months (because I'm just that talented), and got back into the rattletrap to listen to my RDA of White Heart as I drove the twenty minutes back home.

Two minutes out of town, the rattletrap overheats.

It's happened before, so almost on autopilot, I pulled over into the next driveway (thank you for the use of your driveway every three months when this happens, person with two driveways and the old country-style cottage surrounded by trees), shut the van off, and called my longsuffering dad to bring me some coolant (because for some reason the jug that had been in the back of the rattletrap was no longer there).

I hung up the phone and settled back into the still-cold seat in the strangely quiet van surrounded by the vast Alberta night sky. Literally thirty seconds later it hit me.

Fly Eagle Fly.

Oh crap.

It was already ten o'clock. By the time my dad got there it would be pushing 10.30. Then it was a twenty-minute drive back. I would have an hour to finish the dance.

Five measures (phrases, bars...) doesn't sound like much, but I had absolutely no ideas at all for them yet (and usually I have some vague vision in my head). It was the most difficult part of the dance -- I wasn't quite sure what I wanted out of this one little section, and thus had no idea where to even start.

But still... I had accomplished quite a bit earlier that day... maybe... maybe...

My dramatic self was on the verge of hypothermia by the time my dad arrived (why is it that when the rattletrap 'overheats' it's never actually anything close to warm?). The rattletrap behaved better with more coolant in it and we went home. I rushed down to my room and hunched over my little table with my iPod and my pencil, willing my brain to come up with something brilliant in the next hour... please...

And it did -- but only after it came up with something else first that I wasted half an hour writing and then had to erase. By the time I finished the dance and looked up at the clock it was 12.45. In the morning.

I had failed.

I had fallen short of my goal.

There aren't a lot of words to describe how crushing that was.

I had set a goal, and I had missed meeting it. I think the only thing that could have made it worse was if it had been the 31st of January.

But it was not and after much ranting about the rattletrap on Facebook and a few hours' sleep, I began working on The Dance.

It's going beautifully -- I'm quite surprised. I think it might be because last time I wrote a piece with more than three people it was the middle of December. After microanalysing every little thing that two people are doing for the past month and a half (to make sure they're complimenting each other but not doing the exact same thing), giving my brain six dancers to play with was like hearing your favourite band is getting back together. Or at least how I imagine it would be (*cough cough* notthatI'mtryingtotellyouanythingWhiteHeart *cough*). Add to that the ridiculously easy counting structure of the song (eights, all the way through), rather than the gorgeous-but-slightly-epileptic tendencies of Mark Gersmehl's synthesizer, and my brain is doing absolute cartwheels of delight. My problem now is keeping up with the notating, not getting ideas. And that is definitely a good problem to have in this line of creativity...

September With A Vengeance

The first of September dawned autumn with a vengeance, blustery and cold. Technically it's still summer, but now -- all cheer! -- winter is coming and Christmas will be here again.

The furnace even ran the next morning, and rain and grey skies dominated the weekend.

I wonder why it is that the cold weather makes everything seem cosier and more inviting. Like you're wrapped up in a quilt with a tea even though you haven't had a tea in weeks and are in fact freezing because everybody else in the house still insists on opening the windows and blasting the electric fan.

There's something about the first days of autumn, I've noticed, that makes music seem better than normal. Stuff like Petra's album This Means War!, 1980s music, and almost anything by David Meece seems particularly warm against the biting wind. Looking out the window by the table when I'm working on choreography is a far more absorbing activity now. Lightly fluttering green leaves in the sunlight are lovely, but boring. Trees bent sideways by the storms that dive-bomb us through the summer are disconcerting. But trees with still-green leaves blowing nicely in a stiff wind and a grey-white sky that could almost hold snow... this is the best of both worlds. This is the backdrop to a daydream.

This Is Why I Cannot Read People

My mother, when it's cold out and the power is on:

"What do you mean, it's cold? It's only minus fifteen with a stiff wind -- Don't you dare touch that thermostat! Go get another blanket! Goodness, just because you suddenly decided it was a little cold..."

(Obviously failing to take into account the fact that I have no more blankets to use and yes, that is ice built up on the insides of all the windows in the house...)

My mother, when it's cold out and the power goes out:

"All right, just when are they finally going to get the power back on so we can run the furnace already?"

Me: *assorted you-had-your-chance grumbling under breath*