Sentimental Ramblings
First, let's just get it out there that I'm so super excited for the new forensics season - the novices are adorable and I'm just so pumped to see what everyone's going to come up with this year. That and I'm tired of not working - this summer has been insanely long. Anyway, I went to the novice workshop today and felt terribly old introducing both Austin and Vince as "my novice" even though they're both starting their second year of college shortly. And I swear Vince was shorter than me for quite a while. It's weird knowing that this will be the first year that everyone that competed while I was in high school has graduated - I'm officially a "forensics generation" out. Which is pretty cool, actually. I just feel very very old thinking about it.
Anyway (and I just decided that I'm not going to read this and edit it at all, so prepare to read something fabulously disjointed), I get to do "Girl Coming In For a Landing" tomorrow, something I was literally jumping up and down and bouncing off the walls about (yes, I said literally and meant it) for quite some time today. Oh my goodness, I'm so so so so excited, I love that piece to death.
I scanned the pages out of the book and put them in the binder tonight - my originals I lent to a teammate at St. Joe's my freshman year so she could use the prose I had for CFLs, and she promptly lost them. So of course it doesn't quite look the way it did in competition. I'd colored in some of the illustrations, I had penciled notes and directions, plenty of things crossed out and bracketed, and of course the upside down prose alongside it all. It's fitting, though, that it can't look the way it used to, because there's no way I'll ever be able to perform it the way I used to. I'm not going to change anything. I know if I picked up the piece today I'd cut and interpret it very differently. Time has gone by. I've learned so much since then - I'm not saying just about interp and acting, either - I really mean about myself. I suppose especially since "Girl" has always been so personal to me, I can't imagine the possiblity of not allowing what I've learned to affect the delivery. It's so incredible looking back at all of this old art with new eyes. My goodness, I reread "After the Wink," the prose I had then, last summer and got CHILLS because I finally understood it - the whole understanding why someone might be tempted to cheat and then finding the strength to decide against going through with the mistake - oh my god! I'm not kidding, chills. And I was like DAMN how good would I be with that prose now that I KNOW what those written words mean.
But like I was saying before I tangented myself- yes, tangented is a word now, and I said I'd be disjointed - I put the poetry in my binder... and I decided that if I'm going to have anything in my binder, I might as well use it as a tribute to the pieces of which I was most proud. So I have "Girl," obviously, my baby. I have the teaser to the prose I did the last semster I competed... Mostly because the page doesn't fit in the slicks I'm using to save my old cuttings, partly because I loved the piece, but really a reminder that its by the same author as "After the Wink," which turned out to be one of the most important things I ever performed. Placing at nats, my "very minimal preparation" bragging rights, and the idea that my performance actually inspired and motivated the path of another competitor, which is just so mind blowingly incredible for me to have been told.
So there's that, then "Oleanna" - a reminder of the hardest I've ever worked on anything. I needed to fill in for Christina in what was already an amazing duo starting two weeks before nats. Truly, I have never worked as hard as I did those two weeks to memorize, get the blocking down, and figure out the character... and my god was that a difficult character. We didn't break at either nationals, but I'm still damn proud of what we managed to accomplish. And I'll never forget Robb's reaction when we rehearsed for him right before nats, particularly to my delivery of the last moment - there was no better compliment than his confidence and pride in the work we'd done.
And then I have "Music From a Sparkling Planet" - the first duo I did at St. Joe's. Dan and I read it together at the first weekend practice, and I feel trite in saying that we laughed and we cried, but it was true. We laughed so hard we couldn't get through the lines at points, and there was a point where we had to put the book down and get some tears out before we could continue. And we fought with Robb ALL YEAR about the cutting. Honestly, I have about 15 different versions on my computer - some with our idea, some with Robb's, some that were just an awful compromise of the two. We finally got it right by the end of the year - and Robb finally admitted that we were right at one point... We were never in time. Ever. We just loved it too much to cut it down and didn't give a shit that the coaches threatened to charge us for it. And my goodness I loved that character and our interpretation of the Tamara/Andy relationship, and my god I loved that duo. One of the best compliments I ever got was from one of the local coaches - he said he would go out of his way to watch us in final rounds because I was so natural and real with Tamara, and what was so cool about that was I truly felt that way about that character - she was just so easy for me to slip into. *sigh* Now I just feel like I'm bragging. But this is what I want to remember.
So that's what I have in my binder... if "Ruthless!" had been a binder event it would be there too, because gooddman was I proud of that one, too. Little known fact, I had 32 pieces over the 5 1/2 years. That's a lot. haha. But yeah. "Girl" takes up all of the pages I own except one, so it overlaps onto the duos, which is funny. My "nothings" fall on some interesting pages. But I did rearrange things just a touch so that my final line, which I never actually had on the page, "taking care, taking it home," falls on "Oh, what the future holds," from "Music." Those two lines really always carried the same meaning for me. I wrote about this in my real journal, but it just occured to me that the connection that I drew between the two will almost certainly only be followed by me, so I'll just move on.
I have one page empty. I wanted to fill it with a picture, so I went through all of my old forensics pictures. Twice. I was looking for the one picture that perfectly captures 5 1/2 years of competition memories, but I found that I don't have a single picture that doesn't. I have so many hilarious and/or touching moments on film... and it was funny because I was going through thinking Oh, I need a picture with the Morons... but then the Ghost Boys won't be in it... or what about my St. Joe's team... or what about just me and Kelly, but then I can't not have Katie! And Lauren! I think I'll either settle for nothing at all or the picture I took at Emory during the ice storm when we managed to slide our way to a restaurant that had a big neon "No Dancin' On The Tables!" sign... Yeah. Maybe I'll go with that.
Anyway (and I just decided that I'm not going to read this and edit it at all, so prepare to read something fabulously disjointed), I get to do "Girl Coming In For a Landing" tomorrow, something I was literally jumping up and down and bouncing off the walls about (yes, I said literally and meant it) for quite some time today. Oh my goodness, I'm so so so so excited, I love that piece to death.
I scanned the pages out of the book and put them in the binder tonight - my originals I lent to a teammate at St. Joe's my freshman year so she could use the prose I had for CFLs, and she promptly lost them. So of course it doesn't quite look the way it did in competition. I'd colored in some of the illustrations, I had penciled notes and directions, plenty of things crossed out and bracketed, and of course the upside down prose alongside it all. It's fitting, though, that it can't look the way it used to, because there's no way I'll ever be able to perform it the way I used to. I'm not going to change anything. I know if I picked up the piece today I'd cut and interpret it very differently. Time has gone by. I've learned so much since then - I'm not saying just about interp and acting, either - I really mean about myself. I suppose especially since "Girl" has always been so personal to me, I can't imagine the possiblity of not allowing what I've learned to affect the delivery. It's so incredible looking back at all of this old art with new eyes. My goodness, I reread "After the Wink," the prose I had then, last summer and got CHILLS because I finally understood it - the whole understanding why someone might be tempted to cheat and then finding the strength to decide against going through with the mistake - oh my god! I'm not kidding, chills. And I was like DAMN how good would I be with that prose now that I KNOW what those written words mean.
But like I was saying before I tangented myself- yes, tangented is a word now, and I said I'd be disjointed - I put the poetry in my binder... and I decided that if I'm going to have anything in my binder, I might as well use it as a tribute to the pieces of which I was most proud. So I have "Girl," obviously, my baby. I have the teaser to the prose I did the last semster I competed... Mostly because the page doesn't fit in the slicks I'm using to save my old cuttings, partly because I loved the piece, but really a reminder that its by the same author as "After the Wink," which turned out to be one of the most important things I ever performed. Placing at nats, my "very minimal preparation" bragging rights, and the idea that my performance actually inspired and motivated the path of another competitor, which is just so mind blowingly incredible for me to have been told.
So there's that, then "Oleanna" - a reminder of the hardest I've ever worked on anything. I needed to fill in for Christina in what was already an amazing duo starting two weeks before nats. Truly, I have never worked as hard as I did those two weeks to memorize, get the blocking down, and figure out the character... and my god was that a difficult character. We didn't break at either nationals, but I'm still damn proud of what we managed to accomplish. And I'll never forget Robb's reaction when we rehearsed for him right before nats, particularly to my delivery of the last moment - there was no better compliment than his confidence and pride in the work we'd done.
And then I have "Music From a Sparkling Planet" - the first duo I did at St. Joe's. Dan and I read it together at the first weekend practice, and I feel trite in saying that we laughed and we cried, but it was true. We laughed so hard we couldn't get through the lines at points, and there was a point where we had to put the book down and get some tears out before we could continue. And we fought with Robb ALL YEAR about the cutting. Honestly, I have about 15 different versions on my computer - some with our idea, some with Robb's, some that were just an awful compromise of the two. We finally got it right by the end of the year - and Robb finally admitted that we were right at one point... We were never in time. Ever. We just loved it too much to cut it down and didn't give a shit that the coaches threatened to charge us for it. And my goodness I loved that character and our interpretation of the Tamara/Andy relationship, and my god I loved that duo. One of the best compliments I ever got was from one of the local coaches - he said he would go out of his way to watch us in final rounds because I was so natural and real with Tamara, and what was so cool about that was I truly felt that way about that character - she was just so easy for me to slip into. *sigh* Now I just feel like I'm bragging. But this is what I want to remember.
So that's what I have in my binder... if "Ruthless!" had been a binder event it would be there too, because gooddman was I proud of that one, too. Little known fact, I had 32 pieces over the 5 1/2 years. That's a lot. haha. But yeah. "Girl" takes up all of the pages I own except one, so it overlaps onto the duos, which is funny. My "nothings" fall on some interesting pages. But I did rearrange things just a touch so that my final line, which I never actually had on the page, "taking care, taking it home," falls on "Oh, what the future holds," from "Music." Those two lines really always carried the same meaning for me. I wrote about this in my real journal, but it just occured to me that the connection that I drew between the two will almost certainly only be followed by me, so I'll just move on.
I have one page empty. I wanted to fill it with a picture, so I went through all of my old forensics pictures. Twice. I was looking for the one picture that perfectly captures 5 1/2 years of competition memories, but I found that I don't have a single picture that doesn't. I have so many hilarious and/or touching moments on film... and it was funny because I was going through thinking Oh, I need a picture with the Morons... but then the Ghost Boys won't be in it... or what about my St. Joe's team... or what about just me and Kelly, but then I can't not have Katie! And Lauren! I think I'll either settle for nothing at all or the picture I took at Emory during the ice storm when we managed to slide our way to a restaurant that had a big neon "No Dancin' On The Tables!" sign... Yeah. Maybe I'll go with that.