A Note from Me to Me

More on the room-cleaning front. While clearing my desk, I found a small, folded note I wrote myself. I vaguely remember writing it-- before college, clearly, or maybe a month or two in. Anyway, it's at least two years old, probably more.

It says:

Less complaining-- less WORDS-- more action. Send letters. Give. And try. Hiding and bitching won't fix it, and TRYING CAN'T HURT ME.

Worst case scenario: I go out, I don't have a very good time, I run back to Scones having proved myself right all along.

But.

But maybe it can be different. And asking and trying and talking and talking BACK cannot hurt me. And it may just help someone else.

Don't just find nerdfighters. CREATE THEM.

I am a good person.
I'm an attractive person.
I am a talented person.

TAKE THE ADVICE I GIVE EVERYONE ELSE.

All I have it what I give myself.

I don't even... these are all really good things to remember, of course. But I'm so far away from that now. I don't need to hear that from myself. I don't even recognize that person.

And I suppose that can only be a good thing.

Relics of a Me I'm Not.

Hey, Sounds. Long time no post.

So I'm cleaning my room right now (a laborious, unending process that will occupy me all summer, I'm sure) and I have to say, it's a bizarrely nostalgic experience. Unproductively so.

One of the downsides of an obsessive personality is that you're convinced, in the midst of your obsession, that nothing will ever change. That whatever you love right now will be the thing you love forever, just as passionately. And unfortunately that's just not the case. Do I still love Harry Potter? Hell yes I do. I always will. But I wasted a fortune on decorative pins at conventions, and they stayed on my purse until the fasteners broke. And now I have a bunch of broken pins that say things like "You had me at drink this" and "FREE STAN SHUNPIKE." They're adorable, I guess, but, like... what do I do with them?

Or, another example. Several years ago, I bought "Martial Arts for Dummies." I was big into anime at the time, and writing fanfic, and I thought it would be a good research tool. (In my defense, this was in the days before wikipedia.) I can always donate it, of course, or sell it on amazon or to the half-price bookstore in town, but that goes against my nature. I'm a packrat at heart, first of all, so any plan that ever requires me to actually get rid of something is always going to make me balk, but it's more than that. As if by getting rid of this stupid book I don't need and will never read again, I'm betraying my past self. Calling take-backs or something.

It's highly irrational. But so are my spending habits. I mean, seriously. I have a DESK GONG. A little gong, about the circumference of a silver dollar, with a twig-sized metal rod as a mallet. Why? Well, I bought it in my senior year of high school-- picked it up at Borders, from those shelves of Hey Buy One Last Thing Before You Check Out! chain bookstores set up on line before the register. I was directing a short play for drama class at the time* and also competing in Duo Interpretation on the Speech and Debate team with my friend Will. Will's a fantastic actor, and we both loved "Sure Thing" by David Ives: another student had put it on for THEIR senior-directed play a few years previously, and so we decided to use it as our first Duo piece, in Junior year. We were never happy with our interpretation-- it was too static-- and while we loved our Senior piece, a cutting of You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, we never quite got over our love of "Sure Thing."

Being the youtube enthusiast that I am (well, was) and aspiring director that I'm still not quite comfortable being, I had a brilliant idea: we'd revisit "Sure Thing" over the summer, with me behind the camera and him appearing again as Bill. Some other friend of ours would play Betty. I'm still proud of the idea; if you're unfamiliar with "Sure Thing," the basic premise is that a guy and a girl try and work their way through a stereotypical romcom meet-cute. The twist is that every time one of them does something wrong, a bell rings and the scene starts over-- they get a second chance to make a first impression. In my hypothetical film version, every time the bell rang we'd cut to a new location-- some other restaurant, with Bill and Betty in different clothes. A sequence of alternate realities.** And that's where the mini-gong comes in. I was going to use it instead of the typical concierge bell, with a white-gloved hand doing the ringing. A cut-away between each scene, instead of just the sound effect.

All of which is interesting and kind of cool, except for the part where the film never got made. It probably will never get made. And yet the desk gong remains, gathering dust on my shelf next to the anthropomorphic garlic clove plushie Amanda got me when she went to California.

I mean, honestly. I have a lava lamp, for fuck's sake. What does one do with a lava lamp? Why are they sold? What purpose do they serve? But I was on the cusp of teenagerhood and I thought they were the coolest thing, I put it on my Hanukkah list, and that was that. Another useless thing to add to my collection.

I have a corkboard covered with post-cards from friends I've long since lost touch with; a desk drawer filled to the brim of all of my AP US History notes from sophomore year, because I was convinced I'd grow up to be a high school history teacher, and I didn't want to forget how Mr. Hand had done it; a book of Celtic runes I bought in England, just because it was a book of runes from England; an action figure of myself.

I feel like my room would be a sociologist's dream-- or perhaps their worst nightmare. And it all boils down, I think, to the tension between what's important and what matters. These things all mattered to me once--does that make them important? Should things that were once important to you always matter, at least in some small way? They set me on the path, after all. I wouldn't-- couldn't-- be now-me if I hadn't been then-me first.

I'm sure I could dig up a more useful and fitting quotation if I tried, but all I can think about is a rather throwaway line from King Lear. Lear gets pissed off at Cordelia for snubbing him, he banishes her, and Kent speaks up-- saying what an injustice it is, etc etc. He gets chastised for failing to observe proper court decorum and speaking out of turn, to which he bursts out "Anger hath a privilege!"***

Does the past have a privilege?



* a hilarious little one-act called Jimmy the Antichrist, the script of which is also around here somewhere, cluttering up my life.
** In the interest of not repeating myself, I've relegated this to the footnotes: GOD I still love that concept. Maybe some day...
*** What a great line. Oh, Shakespeare, the things you do to me.

A Short Stories short story.

Something interesting happened when I was walking out of Short Stories today. We're on the brink of starting this project where we (split into groups too large to be productive, imho, but that's a blog for another day) take a short story published before 1860-- and only ever in one addition-- and "re-publish" it (possibly reworked, or with footnotes, or a foreword, or whatever). Because of the nature of the assignment (the source text can only have been published once before, and in the 19th century) we're using stuff from the Archives and Special Collections sections of the library.

Items in Archives and Special Collections include a Shakespeare First Folio and an Oscar (which I've held! with gloves.)

Anyway. So after class today, Professor Plotz pulled me aside and asked me an interesting question. Apparently, at one of the sessions in A&SC, a girl found a bunch of dried flower petals in the book she was looking at, and after the meeting, she went back to the library and asked if she could keep them. She had "medium-length brown hair," and so Plotz asked me if it was me.

It wasn't. But I'm kind of really touched that he thought it was something I'd do. We agreed it was really sweet and cute.

In other Brandeis news, my play is going really well! Housing, however, is a nightmare. The problem is that while I have a lot of friends here at school, none of them are in my year. And while juniors and seniors can room together-- which is why I wasn't worried about this before, because I thought I'd be rooming with Talia-- Talia and Becca and their friend Marissa want to live in the Foster Mods, and juniors can't live in the Mods. And I don't know if my lottery number is good enough to get me into one of the (I think) 12 singles in Ziv, which means there's a fair chance I could be living in Grad-- which is off campus, across the commuter rail tracks and past a business park. Those of you who have visited me at school know how fucking far of a walk that is.

I really don't want to live in Grad. But the alternative is crossing my fingers and hoping Talia and Becca don't get the room they want, so I can benefit from their misfortune and we can get a suite in Ziv together, but that's a terrible thing to think. So. I just... I don't know.

Over on livejournal, I've posted a picspam about Journey's End.

Also, I've decided to change my sidebar quote. The old one:

"Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby"

omgwtfbbq

I am only a teenager for five more minutes.

Today in class, Kosta told me-- and these were his exact words--"You ask good questions. I like you." It kinda made my life.

In the past year, I have:

• Been a bridesmaid in a good friend's wedding
• Had a boy tell me he was in love with me
• Gotten drunk for the first time
• Finally figured out-- mostlykinda-- what it is I want to do, and who it is I want to be, for the rest of my life
• Gotten in a very minor car accident

Um um um. Two minutes to go. I can't think. I'll talk more about this tomorrow, I guess.

One minute. Oh my god.

I Love (Gratuitously Stealing Hayley's Ideas)

Hello, blog reader people. Real life has been a COMPLETE bitch, lately, in the best of ways, which is why we haven't spoken in a while.

I wasn't gonna blog tonight (today? I don't know what a 2:30 am post counts as) but then I read Hayley's wonderful blog entry and was, as many were, just a little bit inspired.

So, then. In no particular order, certainly missing a great many things, and not quite as pretty as Hayley's--a list of things I love:

-- I love how Amanda and I can manage not to talk to each other for a month, totally by accident, and then converse as if no time has passed, finding each other--as always--uniquely hilarious.

-- I love taking a whiff of the packet my Earl Grey tea bag came in before I throw it away, because it smells like Saturday mornings and Awakeness and Home.

-- I love coming home from a long day and changing out of my jeans and into pajama bottoms.

-- I love that I can talk to Marlena for hours every day about everything spanning from literary theory to zombies vs unicorns to "What if Angel and Tara opened a bed and breakfast together" to our most personal and private hopes and dreams without once tiring of each other or disagreeing. (Well. Aside from the zombies and unicorns thing. ZOMBIES RULE.)

-- I love singing in my car at the top of my lungs, because that's what cars are for and that's what songs are for and it all just perfectly fits.

-- I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to steal this one, word for word: "I love how a line in a poem can strike a part of your brain that you hadn't noticed was asleep before, and you can't rephrase the line or explain why it makes sense, because it's perfect and beautiful in that it says something that's never before been put so well." Because that's what this blog is all about, and Hayley said it better than I could.

-- I love how all the writers/artists/creators I love-- Jane Espenson, Joss Whedon, Jacob the Recapper, John Green-- end up connected to and inspired by each other in ways I never dreamed, which in turn inspires me. Also, all of them have J-names, and what's up with that?

-- I love wearing my Missing Piece around my neck and my dad's high school ring on my finger every day, because I'm telling you who I am and where I come from without even saying a word, and no one really seems to notice, until they do. Which is how getting to know someone always works.

-- I love making my sister laugh, because I have to earn it.

-- I love that when I have Big News (like I did yesterday, but is a bit too personal to share with you, blog readers) and I have to call my best friends, my mom is on that list.

-- I love intricately structured narratives.

-- I love watching heavy snowfall through a window, when I'm warm and comfy indoors, preferably with hot chocolate.

-- I love the way autumn smells, how the leaves get brittle and beautful and change the air; how I can use words like "brisk" and "crisp" to describe the mornings and even though the world is dying it feels so much more like starting over than spring does. (Spring, to be clear, smells like allergies and feels like death, but this is not a list of things I hate, so.)

-- I love the thin rim of blue around my mostly green eyes.

-- I love loving things to death-- wearing holes in the canvas of my Converse, dog-earing my favorite pages of books, knowing lines of movies so well I can quote along with them as I watch.

-- I love how I've finally found my passion and a bliss to follow; how taking classes in my majors just sets my brain on fire.

-- I love connecting with strangers over a mutual love, and how at the end of the conversation you're not strangers anymore.

You may notice, I've changed the sidebar quote to a (admittedly slightly arrogant) Fitzgerald line. Blog Reader Morgan requested that I share more quotations with you, so I think I'm gonna try and change it every month or so, from now on.

I honestly can't remember what the old-old one used to be, so in the interest of keeping a record of Things I Like, I'll post the previous one in my blog entries when I switch them. Here's what it used to be, which is also One More Thing I Love:

"It's not about my joy, the relief of burden. I like to see people reunited, maybe that's a silly thing, but what can I say, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone."

- Jonathan Safran Foer, "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close"

I was gonna make a soul/sole pun, but palms are not called hand-soles.

Today has been an interesting day.

So I got up relatively early (considering it's a Lazy Thursday and I have no classes) and went to the campus Copy Center in order to sort out my Hitchhiker's script. While there, I learned two important things: one, that the Copy Center only uses WhoCash (a kind of Brandeis-only debit currency), which I don't have, and two, that they don't do scanning. Well. This left me with two equally annoying and time-consuming options: either go to the library, try and find/figure out their scanner, input the entire thing by hand and then farm out the picture files for printing, or type up the damn thing myself-- which will make for a cleaner, better-edited script, which the cast can print on their own time, but is a huge bitch for me. So I have to do THAT at some point, and won't that be fun?

Then I had to e-mail Lena and respectfully withdraw my application for Final Battle. I'm only now feeling well enough to record all my audition stuff, and so I hadn't looked, since I've been here, to see if I'd packed my camera charger. Which, fun fact, I didn't. So I'm stuck with two days until deadline, a still-sore throat, and a paperweight instead of a camera. Adding to that how incredibly busy I'm going to be this semester, I just... something had to give. However, there's still a possibility I can perform with them in the chorus or something, because Lena is AWESOME and is giving me a chance. But any thoughts I had about being, for example, Ginny Weasley... well, it ain't gonna happen. Which is fine; just a bit sad.

Then I found out J.D. Salinger died. I... I'm very zen about it; it hasn't made me want to cry or anything. He was a hermit, and very old, and all in all it was a good life. But the world is just a little more phony, perhaps, now that he's not in it.

So there are all these tiny things that add up to misery put together, even though I'm actually in an excellent mood and having a WONDERFUL time at school so far. When I'm in the thick of it-- hearing Professor Flesch lecture about Shakespeare; or meeting the COOLEST MIDYEAR IN THE WORLD named Rachel tonight at BCBC and talking with her for an hour about how fanfiction leads to better writers and readers when done right; or singing with my girls in UTO (we added two to our family last night!) I feel like I'm on top of the world. I'm engaged and learning and so, so happy to be here. But when I come home to catch my breath, and I start thinking about it all-- the stuff still looming in the distance, the homework I haven't yet done, how many directions I'm throwing myself in this semester-- it feels like I'm drowning.

So I called Hayley. And we bitched and moaned at each other for a while, sounding thoroughly wretched and cleaning out all the tiny nicks and cuts that add up to so much more. It's funny, because, like, we're both in a really great place... but sometimes, you just need to whine and complain.

Anyway.

My palms are on FIRE right now because the weather did this weird snow-rain-wind-blizzard-snow thing in the course of, like, an hour and a half, leaving a very fine coat of ice on the ground, which I then proceeded to slip on like a Stooge. Not my proudest moment.

So where do I stand? I have homework to do tonight--reading more stories from Arabian Nights, and studying up on Richard II for my first quiz tomorrow. Reading for Kosta's class, for the first time, which I'm sure will go over my head. I still haven't unpacked my suitcase. I have 70 some odd pages of script to transcribe asap, and a UTO meeting on Sunday that will dictate my schedule for the rest of the year. Have I mentioned we're recording a CD? We're going to pick our normal three nights a week to rehearse, then set aside who knows how many Saturdays to go to the studio and record. We're also selecting a date for our Spring Concert. Which would be fine, except I'M DIRECTING A PLAY THIS SEMESTER. I don't have a script yet, which means I haven't planned auditions. With no auditions there's no cast, and with no cast there's no schedule. Once I have that, I need to find the times where we can rehearse THAT, that won't interfere with the rest of my life, and cross my fingers and HOPE that Ryan didn't schedule a play performance for whatever night UTO chooses for the concert.

I'm sorry. I don't even know if any of that was coherent. The moral of the story is that I'm very stressed, and for good reason. So many tiny things. And the only thing that will solve it all is time.

School is awesome!

QUICK NOTE: there are spoilers for Perfect fifths in the first two paragraphs of this blog post. Read at your own risk. (HAPPY, Marlena?)

Okay, so when I twittered earlier about TARDIS-related daydreams, Hayley texted to yell at me for not marking today's occasion: as it is January 19th, today is the day Jessica Darling and Marcus Flutie cross paths for the final time in Megan McCafferty's novel Perfect Fifths. I promised her that I would blog about it so she wouldn't be mad anymore.

Well, I lied. But I have good reasons! First of all, the thing I want to actually discuss-- that is, Bridget and Percy's marriage-- doesn't take place until the 20th. So I can talk about it tomorrow and have it still be relevant. And for another, today was my first day of classes, and I would really like to talk about that while it's still fresh in my mind. So, sorry Hayley. But I'll get to it.

In any case!

Today I had three of the four classes I'll be taking this semester, so let's just tackle them in order, shall we?

My first class was Global Warming and Nuclear Winter, which I'm only taking because I need a science class. Luckily, the professor is very well aware of this. "I know why you're taking this course," he said. "It's because you want science credit. But I'm here because it's fun! So, you'll just have to suffer with me while I have fun." Hee! On the board, he'd written his fully notated name: Doctor Professor Kostantinos Tsipis. And yes, he is just as adorably old and Greek as his name suggests. One by one, he started crossing off parts of his name until we were left with just "Kosta," which is what he wants us to call him. Cuuute!

Anyway. 70% of the class is the final research paper, and he emphasized over and over again that he doesn't care about our grades: he just wants to make sure we learn something. This is so refreshing I cannot even tell you-- not to mention reassuring, given that this is a science class and that's scary. But he knows that! "I want you to become unafraid of science. Humanities majors are PETRIFIED of science-- they're allergic to it. I want to cure that!" The emphasis of the course will be on understanding the importance of numbers and why we quantify things; we're meant to ask questions. This is a class about humanity: the problems we face as a species, and our tendency to learn by experience.

(And in a perfect My Big Fat Greek Wedding moment, he handed out a scientific notation cheat sheet that had the etymological origins of the number prefixes. Like, for example:

Million = 10⁶ = mega- (from "μέγας" ["big"])

HOW. CUTE. IS. THAT? Also, he makes his lowercase "a"s like lowercase greek alpha: α, which is very confusing to read but also extremely endearing.)

My next class was Shakespeare, which is in a huge lecture hall. That's nice, though, because I really got a feeling of Brandeis community in there. Margaret, one of the girls in UTO, sat behind me; Tal, this one guy who ALWAYS ends up in one of my classes, because we're on the same academic track; Ian, the president of the Comic Book Club, and at least three members of Hold Thy Peace, the on-campus Shakespeare performance group... they were all there. As was the hot TA from my Indie class last semester, we'll see if I get him this time. The professor, Flesch, was highly recommended to me by Talia, and I can see why: he's dynamic and interesting and so, so passionate about his subject matter.

He's also a huge nerd. He talked about Star Wars when describing how Shakespeare's intentions towards his histories are evident in that he didn't write them in chronological order, and what his thematic treatment of Henry V's life said about him as a creator. And then, when we were discussing our Shakespeare's Complete Works copies, he talked about how radical an idea it was-- and still is-- to make a Complete Works for plays. In the Elizabethan era, "works" were treatises by Aristotle or Plato. They were not just ordinary plays. The first person to compile such a thing was Ben Johnson, a contemporary of Shakespeare's. "You have to admire the audacity of it," said Professor Flesch. "A lowly playwright publishing his own material in an anthology of 'works.' This is almost as if Joss Whedon would go and collect Buffy scripts and publish them... oh wait." HEE!

Oh, and later, when he was talking about the importance of iambic pentameter, he used not the example I was expecting ("My chest of drawers divide amongst my friends," thank you John Green) but one from Total Recall: ("You know how much I hate this fucking planet!" which is an example of a feminine ending) and one from regular life at a diner: ("I'll have the special and a glass of Coke," which is masculine. "Or 'diet Coke,' if you're worried" he amended.) In any case, we'll be reading Richard II, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony & Cleopatra, and A Winter's Tale, which is pretty much a play per week and a half. I have to say, I'm excited to read A Winter's Tale, and I'm not sure if it's because it's the origin of the name Hermione, or because it includes the stage direction "Exit pursued by bear."

Tal followed me to my last class, Birth of the Short Story: Gods, Ghosts, Lunatics. It was immensely gratifying, because that class was filled with what I'll call my English Posse-- the kids I took the 100 intro course with, who will stay with me as we all fulfill our majors. Talia, Chef, Rebecca, Tal... it's really awesome that we have our own little corner of the room. We read three pre-genre short stories, and argued over what defines a short story and what makes them effective, and I've missed English classes. I love film studies and I'm glad I took two film classes last semester, but balancing them out with two English courses this semester feels right. I really love analysis and critical thinking and class discussions and defending interpretations. It's too bad one can't make a career out of it.

But hey, that's what this blog is for, innit?

Anyway, I think I've kept you long enough, Gentle Readers. Tomorrow I have my German Cinema: Vamps and Angels course (which I did NOT select purely for the name, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a contributing factor) and then I'll be mostly settled in for the spring. As for now, I'm off to check up on my favorite web comics and then probably rewatch the World War II episodes from series one of Doctor Who. Later, kids!

LADIEEEES!!

Firstly, a note: to those of you who wandered over here from Hayley's blog, welcome! Glad to have you. She's a pretty awesome girl, huh? (Edit: Oh, my god. I didn't even mean to make the joke. It just came out like that. THAT WAS NOT A REFERENCE. Anyway.)

I'm sorry for the obnoxious title, but I've just got back from my first UTO meeting (that is, for those just joining us, Up the Octave, the all-girls a cappella group I sing with on campus) and, well. We kind of just shout "ladiiies!" a lot at each other. They're an absolutely wonderful group of people whom I never would have met if I didn't sing, and I'm really lucky to have them.

See, like. I've known about a cappella music since I was just a little girl. My older cousins were both in groups, and my high school had two groups (which expanded to four over the course of my being there). For me, it's always been a sign of the musical elite. They're fun and talented and, just... being in an a cappella group MEANS something. It means a) that you got chosen, that you're worthy and wanted, and b) that you kind of get a new family, especially when dealing with college groups. It's a wonderful little subculture.

My first semester, I didn't get into any. I hadn't in high school either, but I'd always chalked that up to high school groups resorting to blatant favoritism and popularity contests (which is true). But college was supposed to be different, and better, and... well, frankly, I'd wanted to go to Brown, and I hadn't gotten in there, and I just wasn't looking for or expecting any more rejection in my life. It kind of ruined the first half of my freshmen year, because after that I stopped trying: I basically lived like a hermit in my dorm, except for going to class.

It was a dark time in Leahland.

Anyway. A lot happened over my freshman year winter break, which resulted in me coming back to Brandeis extremely focused on building a life for myself here. I'm now the secretary of two clubs (one of which is UTO), and I'm directing a play for the other, and I have friends here (imagine that!) and I just...

I suppose the moral of the story is that things are never how you expect them to be, but that's no excuse not to try. My first semester in UTO (which would be spring of last year) I was the only newbie in a group that was very upperclassman-heavy. It was a little isolating. But then, due to a lot of circumstances, we lost more than half the group. And things have changed SO MUCH for the better-- even though, for a few dark moments, the few of us left actually considered just ending the group. The newest group of girls are engaging and silly and sweet, and I am more fond of them than I can describe. I'm not a particularly average person, and so I've kind of gone out of my way to make a non-standard life for myself here at school, with my nerdy little nook of friends. But UTO is my bastion of normality; my one genuinely pure college experience. When I party (which is not often), it's with these girls. I can gossip with them, and we're recording a CD together... it's just pretty all-around wonderful.

Anyway. I didn't intend for this entry to be about my history with a cappella, but it just kind of happened. Tomorrow I start classes, and then it's BAM into the thick of things. So we'll see how I do, shall we?

As and Bs

More reading of Jane Espenson's blog, more thinking about Keeping Faith... the days, how they do bleed into one another.

That said. For a while I've been thinking about entering this contest, which is for Dollhouse essays, the best of which will be judged by Jane herself. I've been brainstorming since they announced it, but today I finally figured out what the hell it is I want to say-- stemming from a realization I had a few weeks back when I thought about how DeWitt would make an awesome captain of the Enterprise. I won't tell you anything else, because it is a contest, after all; if I a) don't get it in on time, or b) am not among the winners when they announce in April (a veritable lifetime away), then I'll post it here. I think it will turn out really well with some aggressive editing and a bit more research, even if it is a tad exoteric.

In the process of writing the first draft, I went downstairs to tell my mom about it-- because she knows a little about Dollhouse and a lot about Star Trek and I figured it would amuse her. In doing so, however, I ended up drawn into a conversation with my grandmother about why Dollhouse is an important show and how come it's a shame they canceled it, what "dystopia" means (though it shocks me she'd never heard the word before, as she's an extremely intelligent woman), and the importance of smart entertainment. That questions of philosophy are valid no matter what medium they're presented in, and why that's why I'm so keen on getting into the industry myself, and making a product that a) I can be proud of, but mostly b) that I myself would want to consume. We ended up talking about what a Kindle is and why it was a scandal when they removed 1984 from the system without warning anyone, and how irony is awesome, and it just... it's having conversations like that that make me confident in my recent career choices. I'll catch myself in the middle of a sentence, deeply analyzing something, or making connections to other sources, and I think-- "oh, damn. I actually know my shit. I sound smart." But that's not why I keep doing it, y'know? I talk about this stuff because I'm passionate for it. Which makes for a very nice cycle.

In unrelated news, I've also been listening to Next to Normal a lot (yay, youtube.) It's a brilliant show; while I don't plan on doing this often, in the spirit of a perfect punctum I want to share one of the songs with you-- again, if you don't want spoilers, you probably shouldn't listen:



Oh, man. When Gabe comes in with that first "catch me, I'm falling?" That's a punctum. A sudden rightness. It's not much about the line itself, though it is catchy-- it's all about its placement within the song, and thematically within the show. Out of context, it's unremarkable-- but in context, it makes you gasp at how perfect it is. Definitely my favorite moment of the show.

Catch me, I'm falling-- faster than anyone should.

In which I try my hand at daily blogging.

Hi, kids!

Now, don't get too excited. We all know I can be a terrible liar when it comes to blogs. But I think I may try and update this thing like a normal person for once... just to see what it's like.

So, what have I been up to in the past, oh... six months or however long it's been?

Well. I watched Angel for the first time and it became one of my favorite things, ever. I was elected director of the BORG play-- we're going to do selections from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio plays, and I'm cutting them now. I've read a few books.

But two or three days ago, I figured out how to turn Keeping Faith from the novel that's always been a part of my soul into the movie in my head and my heart and my hands. Which is amazing and feels like fate and I just...

I've never thought that I had the ability to write a full novel. I think in terms of characters, and not in terms of plots-- I've never been the kind of person who can start a story from a premise.

But film, I think, provides a fantastic cure for that: the clear-cut three-act structure. One valuable thing I learned from taking Screenplay with a rule-abiding Hollywood school writer at the same time as I took American Independent film is that... I hate independent film. I don't like experiments, I don't like vagueness, I don't like surreality. I like clean setup and payoff, and snarky banter, and happy endings.

Perhaps you're less surprised by this revelation than I was.

In any case. Keeping Faith, close as it was to me, has always been about my deep knowledge and love for Faith and David as characters... I've never really had a plot to go with them. I know certain circumstances of their lives, but events alone do not a plot make.

But thank you Syd Field, thank you Marc Weinberg, thank you Joseph Campbell-- I have a beginning and an end, now, and they came to me when I was least looking for them. I haven't even thought about Faith or David in months. So all I need is a middle and a few thousand dollars, and the movie's practically done already.

Oh, yeah, that's something that's... happening. This story is my baby. And I'll be damned if it never gets produced. I'm too much of a crazy control freak about them not to write/direct/cast the thing myself, so I guess it doesn't matter how little regard I have for traditional indie film: looks like I'm gonna be a part of it. It will take me years, but... this feels right. I can't not do it.

And hey. There are plenty of people who make three-act indies that subscribe to formulas. I'm not breaking new ground here. Just look at Imagine Me & You.

No, seriously. Go look at it. It's a good movie.

So... how'd I do? Crazy and random enough for you? I can't imagine why you'd want a daily dose of this, but it promises to be interesting, if nothing else.