I've been listening to the Assassins' soundtrack over and over and over, letting it work both consciously, trying to work out where cues and effects should go, and subconsciously, letting moments come to me suddenly despite it being the 20th time i've listened to the track. I've got some staging ideas, they're not ideal yet and certainly not what I'm going to be the design based off, but it's really all just brainstorming at this point and eventually I'll put what I'm happy with together. It doesn't have to be perfect, I don't even have to know how to build it, it just has to be practical and actually work.
However much I try, I just can't get into 'Unworthy Of Your Love', or 'November 22nd, 1963' though. Oh sure, there are songs in the musical I'm not huge fans of, but I can at least get them into my head and think about what I wanna do with them and such. Those two however I just can't come up with a single decent design idea at the moment. I don't like them at all. They're just dull points in the narrative to me. Hopefully that mindset changes at some point...
Showing posts with label Shows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Shows. Show all posts
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Saturday, 3 March 2012
Everybody's Got The Right...
I haven't done any lighting design work in ages. And I find myself missing it. I'm not actually first rate at design. Don't get me wrong, I'm damned good at my job, and I *can* design, but I'd much rather be Production Managing or Stage Managing; I'm much better at those jobs and I get a lot more out of them. But way way way back in the day when I was first learning all the various bits of stagecraft, I did a lot of design work, I was designing a different show (or more) every week.
The last major bit of design work was now a year ago, for a show that launched January 2011. So I miss design; in fact as much as I love PMing, I love going back to the other roles of crewing every so often, LD, LX/SX op, flies, even simple set building and painting; I feel it makes me a much better PM by going back to these roles once in a while, and I do honestly love looking at a lit stage, or a piece of set, or a particular effect and thinking "I did that, I made that happen" and sure PMing allows you to do that about the entire show, but sometimes its nice to have something distinctly tangible or demonstrable to do that with.
When I see a show, like most technicians, I spent most of the time not looking anywhere near the stage; i'm looking around at the rig, mentally noting how they've done certain cues, what jarrs with me, what i'm impressed with... directors seeing shows tend to do the same in terms of the blocking, deliverance, and well, direction. They just have the advantage that they can do the actors the courtesy of looking in the direction of the stage whilst doing so.
So I decided to do a fantasy design, which are just another way of doing practice - it involves going through almost exactly the same steps as when designing for a show that actually goes up; most of the design you never actually SEE until a few days before the production, most of it has to be in your head. If you're lucky you might have access to some powerful and expensive visualization software, or you might just draw it out and colour it in. Unfortunately I'm not that good at drawing, I can envisage it in my head just fine, and I can write out all the technical information to translate that into a lighting plot, but it does mean I won't be able to post any nice pretty pictures of what I've come up with on here.
So instead, this is more a series of blog posts about the process I'm going through in my head. Maybe other LDs out there totally disagree with how I go about it - design is a very individualistic process and everyone does it in different ways; by and large most designers respect this fact about each other, though of course it does make it difficult if you have to work with opposing styles and methods. At the very least it should serve as an interesting record for my friends that read the blog as to the sorts of things I get up to in my working life.
I started by looking for ideas, if I'm going to do an imaginary design I'm going to need some kind of show to do it about. I see no point in trying to design for one of the big name things, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Evita, A Streetcar Named Desire, etc unless I happen to have some outstanding unique never before done idea, I am not afraid to admit there are far far better designers out there than me (for the record, the 2 LDs I have the most admiration for and go to see shows just on the basis of their involvement are Max Keller and Neil Austin) and they are probably already working on the big shows (in fact, Neil Austin is the LD for the current Broadway production of Evita), that's not to say I don't want to work on them, just I know what I'm good at, and I know what I'm ok at, especially at a high end professional level. So I asked twitter for some ideas, and a friend suggested the musical Assassins, which so far is a distinct possibility for me, though it has its problems as I'll go into. From my own ideas, I would love to work on a Dario Fo play, so am rereading through some of those that I have, however due to the performance space Fo had access to, they are generally single settings with no scene changes, and have very scripted lighting design, naturalistic indoor room scenes, or special spots etc for phone calls etc, which brings me to my next point...
The beauty of design is you can completely let your ideas run away with you. Anyone creative in whatever sphere they work and however they create will always tell you it's better to dream big and tone it down, than be trying to cover inadequacy with greatness elsewhere. And yes you can completely ignore all scripting, and all stage instructions, and all suggestions or hints that a performance should be conducted in a certain way, but at the end of the day, tropes exist because they work; their familiarity means we understand what is being conveyed through certain information and why it has been put into that particular place in a specific manner. So yes I could redesign a Fo play to be completely different, but a lot of the design that is scripted is what most designers would do anyway, because purely and simply, it makes sense. The idea of lighting design, of any design, is to instill certain ideas in the mind of the audience, and evoke certain responses from them as a result. Lighting is used to demarcate the boundaries of rooms, to show the passage of time, to reflect mood, to highlight a out of character moment or foreshadow future events. If you do it right it should be so unobtrusive the audience doesn't even realise the lighting is part of what is evoking their reaction, they will put it all down to good acting. Such is the manner of being a theatre tech that we all accept and embrace as part of the job description, if you've done your job well, no one should know you ever exist. At the end of the day, you could work very very very hard to create a sense of danger, aggression, anger, heat, with some unusual design, and if you've got a good idea, then go with it, but red is a warm and angry colour to most people, just as blue makes things feel cold and stark, and green makes people look ill if used in a period drama piece. Standard design techniques, like stereotypes, exist because they work, so don't try and reinvent the wheel.
So a Dario Fo would be lovely to work on, but possibly quite dull to work on when I have the whole realm of theatre to imagine a design for. Assassins is a musical which allows me to be a lot more creative, but suffers a serious setback in that I do not have access to a copy of the book, whereas I do have copies of the scripts for multiple Dario Fo plays. This isn't necessarily a HUGE problem as there are detailed synopses available online and I can of course listen to the soundtrack as much as I like which is where a lot of the interesting design work would be and where most of the important plot points happen, but it does rather complicate matters. For most Dario Fo plays, and Assassins, I have not actually seen a staged version of the shows, which in some ways limits me, but also means I'm not constrained by preformed ideas other than what the script/music suggests to me in and of itself. The major downside in this is I have to give a basic consideration to all the other areas that would normally be covered by other people, that a LD works in conjunction with, but it means they can focus purely on the lighting without needing to come up with ideas such as blocking, set design, costuming etc all of which affect the lighting. I don't need to plan these thigns out in detail, but I do need to have a basic concept of what the show might look like staged in my head in order to do the lighting plot and that's harder when you're starting at square one. At least my PM experience means I do know the basic concepts of all these different areas, as that's sort of my job as a PM, to pull all the different strands of the technical requirements together, get them working with each other, and orchestrate presenting the whole thing as a single uniform project.
So that's basically where I'm at at the moment. I'm thinking about Assassins, doing a lot of work listening to the soundtrack, which tends to be the starting point of design for any musical, and rereading my Dario Fo plays to see if anything jumps out. Basically I'm in that great and fundamental starting point of design work - sitting there looking like I'm doing nothing, throwing things at the wall inside my head, and seeing what sticks. Design is a long process that never finishes and is generally kept in check by things like deadlines and budgets. Probably some time next week I'll pull out some sheets of paper and start drawing some very rough sketches (which is advanced as my draftsman skills get and like my handwriting, tend to be fairly indecipherable to anyone except me, but if you're lucky I might post them) of sets, stages, things like that, and post some more thoughts on how the whole process is going.
Comments muchly appreciated. Is anybody reading this? Is this in the least bit of interest to you? Did most of this not make sense to you because I'm talking about things which tend to only make sense if you work in that industry? I know its a blog mostly written for me and my random thoughts, but it is nice to know you're all out there and what you think occasionally.
The last major bit of design work was now a year ago, for a show that launched January 2011. So I miss design; in fact as much as I love PMing, I love going back to the other roles of crewing every so often, LD, LX/SX op, flies, even simple set building and painting; I feel it makes me a much better PM by going back to these roles once in a while, and I do honestly love looking at a lit stage, or a piece of set, or a particular effect and thinking "I did that, I made that happen" and sure PMing allows you to do that about the entire show, but sometimes its nice to have something distinctly tangible or demonstrable to do that with.
When I see a show, like most technicians, I spent most of the time not looking anywhere near the stage; i'm looking around at the rig, mentally noting how they've done certain cues, what jarrs with me, what i'm impressed with... directors seeing shows tend to do the same in terms of the blocking, deliverance, and well, direction. They just have the advantage that they can do the actors the courtesy of looking in the direction of the stage whilst doing so.
So I decided to do a fantasy design, which are just another way of doing practice - it involves going through almost exactly the same steps as when designing for a show that actually goes up; most of the design you never actually SEE until a few days before the production, most of it has to be in your head. If you're lucky you might have access to some powerful and expensive visualization software, or you might just draw it out and colour it in. Unfortunately I'm not that good at drawing, I can envisage it in my head just fine, and I can write out all the technical information to translate that into a lighting plot, but it does mean I won't be able to post any nice pretty pictures of what I've come up with on here.
So instead, this is more a series of blog posts about the process I'm going through in my head. Maybe other LDs out there totally disagree with how I go about it - design is a very individualistic process and everyone does it in different ways; by and large most designers respect this fact about each other, though of course it does make it difficult if you have to work with opposing styles and methods. At the very least it should serve as an interesting record for my friends that read the blog as to the sorts of things I get up to in my working life.
I started by looking for ideas, if I'm going to do an imaginary design I'm going to need some kind of show to do it about. I see no point in trying to design for one of the big name things, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Evita, A Streetcar Named Desire, etc unless I happen to have some outstanding unique never before done idea, I am not afraid to admit there are far far better designers out there than me (for the record, the 2 LDs I have the most admiration for and go to see shows just on the basis of their involvement are Max Keller and Neil Austin) and they are probably already working on the big shows (in fact, Neil Austin is the LD for the current Broadway production of Evita), that's not to say I don't want to work on them, just I know what I'm good at, and I know what I'm ok at, especially at a high end professional level. So I asked twitter for some ideas, and a friend suggested the musical Assassins, which so far is a distinct possibility for me, though it has its problems as I'll go into. From my own ideas, I would love to work on a Dario Fo play, so am rereading through some of those that I have, however due to the performance space Fo had access to, they are generally single settings with no scene changes, and have very scripted lighting design, naturalistic indoor room scenes, or special spots etc for phone calls etc, which brings me to my next point...
The beauty of design is you can completely let your ideas run away with you. Anyone creative in whatever sphere they work and however they create will always tell you it's better to dream big and tone it down, than be trying to cover inadequacy with greatness elsewhere. And yes you can completely ignore all scripting, and all stage instructions, and all suggestions or hints that a performance should be conducted in a certain way, but at the end of the day, tropes exist because they work; their familiarity means we understand what is being conveyed through certain information and why it has been put into that particular place in a specific manner. So yes I could redesign a Fo play to be completely different, but a lot of the design that is scripted is what most designers would do anyway, because purely and simply, it makes sense. The idea of lighting design, of any design, is to instill certain ideas in the mind of the audience, and evoke certain responses from them as a result. Lighting is used to demarcate the boundaries of rooms, to show the passage of time, to reflect mood, to highlight a out of character moment or foreshadow future events. If you do it right it should be so unobtrusive the audience doesn't even realise the lighting is part of what is evoking their reaction, they will put it all down to good acting. Such is the manner of being a theatre tech that we all accept and embrace as part of the job description, if you've done your job well, no one should know you ever exist. At the end of the day, you could work very very very hard to create a sense of danger, aggression, anger, heat, with some unusual design, and if you've got a good idea, then go with it, but red is a warm and angry colour to most people, just as blue makes things feel cold and stark, and green makes people look ill if used in a period drama piece. Standard design techniques, like stereotypes, exist because they work, so don't try and reinvent the wheel.
So a Dario Fo would be lovely to work on, but possibly quite dull to work on when I have the whole realm of theatre to imagine a design for. Assassins is a musical which allows me to be a lot more creative, but suffers a serious setback in that I do not have access to a copy of the book, whereas I do have copies of the scripts for multiple Dario Fo plays. This isn't necessarily a HUGE problem as there are detailed synopses available online and I can of course listen to the soundtrack as much as I like which is where a lot of the interesting design work would be and where most of the important plot points happen, but it does rather complicate matters. For most Dario Fo plays, and Assassins, I have not actually seen a staged version of the shows, which in some ways limits me, but also means I'm not constrained by preformed ideas other than what the script/music suggests to me in and of itself. The major downside in this is I have to give a basic consideration to all the other areas that would normally be covered by other people, that a LD works in conjunction with, but it means they can focus purely on the lighting without needing to come up with ideas such as blocking, set design, costuming etc all of which affect the lighting. I don't need to plan these thigns out in detail, but I do need to have a basic concept of what the show might look like staged in my head in order to do the lighting plot and that's harder when you're starting at square one. At least my PM experience means I do know the basic concepts of all these different areas, as that's sort of my job as a PM, to pull all the different strands of the technical requirements together, get them working with each other, and orchestrate presenting the whole thing as a single uniform project.
So that's basically where I'm at at the moment. I'm thinking about Assassins, doing a lot of work listening to the soundtrack, which tends to be the starting point of design for any musical, and rereading my Dario Fo plays to see if anything jumps out. Basically I'm in that great and fundamental starting point of design work - sitting there looking like I'm doing nothing, throwing things at the wall inside my head, and seeing what sticks. Design is a long process that never finishes and is generally kept in check by things like deadlines and budgets. Probably some time next week I'll pull out some sheets of paper and start drawing some very rough sketches (which is advanced as my draftsman skills get and like my handwriting, tend to be fairly indecipherable to anyone except me, but if you're lucky I might post them) of sets, stages, things like that, and post some more thoughts on how the whole process is going.
Comments muchly appreciated. Is anybody reading this? Is this in the least bit of interest to you? Did most of this not make sense to you because I'm talking about things which tend to only make sense if you work in that industry? I know its a blog mostly written for me and my random thoughts, but it is nice to know you're all out there and what you think occasionally.
Friday, 25 June 2010
Something borrowed something blue something old something new york
Cash in wallet: $80
City blocks walked: Approx 150
Equivalent Mileage: 7-8
Money spent on rehydration: $30
New York is big. Much bigger than London. Being crammed into a tiny island, I kinda figured it'd be of a roughly comparable size, at least in terms of the tourist spots, but no, it's big. And of course I can't be arsed with metro trains, and buses and such. I walk everywwhere. As such, in the last 2 days I've walked about 150 city blocks. That's madness for anyone who knows america. No-one walks 10 blocks, let alone 150. This is why everyone in America has a car. To give you an idea, that's about 8 miles, and sure, 4 miles a day isn't that much, but add into that the heat, oh my god the heat, and the humidity; hydration is not possible here, its more a case of wetting your mouth with liquid and waiting the 10 seconds for it to evaporate. Isotones and Electrolytes do not begin to cover it. On the plus side, it means I'm drinking lots of good stuff, coconut water, fruit juices etc. Downside, it costs me a lot.
The neighbourhoods are a lot less distinct here, thoug I'll grant you I havent got to chinatown or little italy yet. But, certainly as a foreigner, it's hard to tell the difference walking between the different areas of the island, its not like the difference between camden, bond street, covent garden, and shoreditch, which is pretty damned obvious. and the area its spread out over is roughly comparable. Sure, as you go up by the side of central park, it gets more obvious that the people living in the Upper East Side on 5th Avenue clearly have money, but still...
Americans do know how to do their breakfasts, and no-one more so that New Yorkers, that's one of the few things I did have time to properly notice on my fleeting visit years ago. The hostel does breakfast. It does cereal and pancakes and waffles and fruit and toast and juice and.... There are 20 loaves of bread out at breakfast. Not to mention the wonderful deli's all over the city that offer one hell of a breakfast for $5-10. Breakfast is something I really love about America, and I really love it about New York. They go all out on them. Shockingly, despite being here for 3 days now, I have yet to eat any bacon. This will be rectified next week.
I went to the WTC site; it's interesting. You can't really see that much of it anymore, as its surrounded by construction fences and there's a big detour that sends you quite wide of the site, but its still obvious; a giant wound in the skyline of an area otherwise filled with towering skyscrapers. Only in Central Park do you get a similar amount of wide open sky above you. Nearly 10 years later, traffic marshalls still tightly control the flow of both vehicular and pedestrian traffic around the site; detours are still in place, and preset siren signals give warning of any demolitions work taking place. And it currently shows no signs of being finished anytime soon. That's a lot of devastation, and a lot of effort to keep business ongoing as usual around it. Interestingly, the buildings around the site, have all been seamlessly renewed, their marble, granite and glass fronts gleaming like any other skyscraper in the city.
I went to see Red last night. I'd seen it in London, at the Donmar warehouse. I've blogged about it before, it's about the life/work of Mark Rothko. I saw it in a 250 thrust theatre, and it transferred over to Broadway in a 800 pros arch setting. I went as a techie geek, to see difference in staging. The sense of a 'studio' is much greater, by virtue of having 3 walls to play with; the actors can move around a bit more; but the intensity of the play was reduced. Maybe this was just because I was all the way up in the gallery for the cheap seat, but in the Donmar production, you were so close you felt you were part of the studio, you were there as the arguments over life and art happened, and the ferocity of the play's signature scene, the priming of a canvas, was so raw and powerful it swept over you like a tidal wave, dragging anything attempting to resist it along its path by the sheer brute force of the emotion portrayed. And that disappeared in this. Don't get me wrong, it was still a great scene, and an outstanding play, it's won 6 tony's: best play, supporting actor, director, sound, lighting, and set design. One of the audience as I was leaving said "the best play i've seen in new york in years". But it was definitely lacking compared to what I saw in London. And yet still worth every cent.
The girls here are amazing. Lots of them are wearing this brilliant fashion, hats and long flowy dresses and shoes not designed for walking in. This must be the only place in the world where the fashion women are wearing actually looks like what was on the catwalk 9 months ago. It's stunning, both as a gay and a straight man. It's hard to understand why everyone else isn't turning their head and watching them walk past, but then they must be so used to it. Sex and the City has clearly left its mark here, and for the better.
Speaking of sex and the city, I went to the NY Public Library the other day. I saw, and stood, exactly where Carrie Bradshaw was dressed with a bird in her head in Vivienne Westwood couture. This wasn't hard to do, having watched it on the plane on the way over, so I remembered pretty good. Unfortunately the front of the library is all covered in scaffolding; it appears to be public works restoration year, it was the same all over Amsterdam when I went there. The inside of the library however is spectacular. I don't think the UK has anything that comes close, or certainly London doesn't. SUre there's the British Library, but thats all specialist pay-for-entry exhibitions, or you have to apply for reader access and then can only take a pad and a pencil in and nothing else and its fairly restrictive as an actual 'library'. Here, I walked in, as a foreigner, and a tourist, and I could go into the reading rooms, and call up any book to read; I could use the computers for internet; I could get wireless access for my laptop. All without a readers card, having just walked in off the street from anywhere in the world, and I could do it all in an absolutely beautiful setting. We need more libraries like this. Open access, inspiring, the sort of place that actively encourages you to learn just by being there.
I'm travelling alone, which has both its up and its downsides. I can do anything I want, I can go anywhere I please, I can um and aah and change my mind and get there however I want when I want. But I don't have someone to share things with, I don't have someone to enjoy the experiences with, I don't have someone to take pictures where I wouldnt. I'm quite a hard person to travel with, because I'm so damned relaxed about it. I'm here for 6 weeks and until yesterday I had no idea what I was doing beyond tomorrow. Other people like to at least know they have somewhere to stay before going to a city, they like to know how long they have, they like to not have $20 a week to live off, they like to not spend money they don't have, they like to rest, and take coffee breaks, not walk around in the pouring rain and the sweltering heat for hours on end like I do. And someone who wasn't like me on a trip like this would drive me insane. It's too much stress to allay their worries and concerns all the time, to deal with their stress over where we're going to sleep the next night. I like travelling alone, and all the freedoms that entails, but sometimes it would be nice if there was someone equally as crazy as me to come with me.
New Orleans and Boston plans have largely been axed, due to a lack of money, which at least means I'm not visiting EVERYWHERE chris wants to go without him. Heading up north tomorrow; hopefully at House Of Blues in Boston tomorrow night if I'm lucky. Then the cape for 4th July. Down to DC to stay with my friend Sean, then I think I'm gonna head over to west coast for a few weeks in California, my home away from home. As for today, I gotta cram all my tourism into today as I thought I'd have tomorrow as well but no longer due to needing to head up North. This probably means I can't go to the anamanaguchi gig tonight :( But instead I shall go to the museums today. I haven't been to the statue of liberty as yet; I shall do that on my return trip in august.
Love and kisses, sorry for the long rather disjointed selection of things to write about, but at least it's keeping you up to date with that's going on with me
City blocks walked: Approx 150
Equivalent Mileage: 7-8
Money spent on rehydration: $30
New York is big. Much bigger than London. Being crammed into a tiny island, I kinda figured it'd be of a roughly comparable size, at least in terms of the tourist spots, but no, it's big. And of course I can't be arsed with metro trains, and buses and such. I walk everywwhere. As such, in the last 2 days I've walked about 150 city blocks. That's madness for anyone who knows america. No-one walks 10 blocks, let alone 150. This is why everyone in America has a car. To give you an idea, that's about 8 miles, and sure, 4 miles a day isn't that much, but add into that the heat, oh my god the heat, and the humidity; hydration is not possible here, its more a case of wetting your mouth with liquid and waiting the 10 seconds for it to evaporate. Isotones and Electrolytes do not begin to cover it. On the plus side, it means I'm drinking lots of good stuff, coconut water, fruit juices etc. Downside, it costs me a lot.
The neighbourhoods are a lot less distinct here, thoug I'll grant you I havent got to chinatown or little italy yet. But, certainly as a foreigner, it's hard to tell the difference walking between the different areas of the island, its not like the difference between camden, bond street, covent garden, and shoreditch, which is pretty damned obvious. and the area its spread out over is roughly comparable. Sure, as you go up by the side of central park, it gets more obvious that the people living in the Upper East Side on 5th Avenue clearly have money, but still...
Americans do know how to do their breakfasts, and no-one more so that New Yorkers, that's one of the few things I did have time to properly notice on my fleeting visit years ago. The hostel does breakfast. It does cereal and pancakes and waffles and fruit and toast and juice and.... There are 20 loaves of bread out at breakfast. Not to mention the wonderful deli's all over the city that offer one hell of a breakfast for $5-10. Breakfast is something I really love about America, and I really love it about New York. They go all out on them. Shockingly, despite being here for 3 days now, I have yet to eat any bacon. This will be rectified next week.
I went to the WTC site; it's interesting. You can't really see that much of it anymore, as its surrounded by construction fences and there's a big detour that sends you quite wide of the site, but its still obvious; a giant wound in the skyline of an area otherwise filled with towering skyscrapers. Only in Central Park do you get a similar amount of wide open sky above you. Nearly 10 years later, traffic marshalls still tightly control the flow of both vehicular and pedestrian traffic around the site; detours are still in place, and preset siren signals give warning of any demolitions work taking place. And it currently shows no signs of being finished anytime soon. That's a lot of devastation, and a lot of effort to keep business ongoing as usual around it. Interestingly, the buildings around the site, have all been seamlessly renewed, their marble, granite and glass fronts gleaming like any other skyscraper in the city.
I went to see Red last night. I'd seen it in London, at the Donmar warehouse. I've blogged about it before, it's about the life/work of Mark Rothko. I saw it in a 250 thrust theatre, and it transferred over to Broadway in a 800 pros arch setting. I went as a techie geek, to see difference in staging. The sense of a 'studio' is much greater, by virtue of having 3 walls to play with; the actors can move around a bit more; but the intensity of the play was reduced. Maybe this was just because I was all the way up in the gallery for the cheap seat, but in the Donmar production, you were so close you felt you were part of the studio, you were there as the arguments over life and art happened, and the ferocity of the play's signature scene, the priming of a canvas, was so raw and powerful it swept over you like a tidal wave, dragging anything attempting to resist it along its path by the sheer brute force of the emotion portrayed. And that disappeared in this. Don't get me wrong, it was still a great scene, and an outstanding play, it's won 6 tony's: best play, supporting actor, director, sound, lighting, and set design. One of the audience as I was leaving said "the best play i've seen in new york in years". But it was definitely lacking compared to what I saw in London. And yet still worth every cent.
The girls here are amazing. Lots of them are wearing this brilliant fashion, hats and long flowy dresses and shoes not designed for walking in. This must be the only place in the world where the fashion women are wearing actually looks like what was on the catwalk 9 months ago. It's stunning, both as a gay and a straight man. It's hard to understand why everyone else isn't turning their head and watching them walk past, but then they must be so used to it. Sex and the City has clearly left its mark here, and for the better.
Speaking of sex and the city, I went to the NY Public Library the other day. I saw, and stood, exactly where Carrie Bradshaw was dressed with a bird in her head in Vivienne Westwood couture. This wasn't hard to do, having watched it on the plane on the way over, so I remembered pretty good. Unfortunately the front of the library is all covered in scaffolding; it appears to be public works restoration year, it was the same all over Amsterdam when I went there. The inside of the library however is spectacular. I don't think the UK has anything that comes close, or certainly London doesn't. SUre there's the British Library, but thats all specialist pay-for-entry exhibitions, or you have to apply for reader access and then can only take a pad and a pencil in and nothing else and its fairly restrictive as an actual 'library'. Here, I walked in, as a foreigner, and a tourist, and I could go into the reading rooms, and call up any book to read; I could use the computers for internet; I could get wireless access for my laptop. All without a readers card, having just walked in off the street from anywhere in the world, and I could do it all in an absolutely beautiful setting. We need more libraries like this. Open access, inspiring, the sort of place that actively encourages you to learn just by being there.
I'm travelling alone, which has both its up and its downsides. I can do anything I want, I can go anywhere I please, I can um and aah and change my mind and get there however I want when I want. But I don't have someone to share things with, I don't have someone to enjoy the experiences with, I don't have someone to take pictures where I wouldnt. I'm quite a hard person to travel with, because I'm so damned relaxed about it. I'm here for 6 weeks and until yesterday I had no idea what I was doing beyond tomorrow. Other people like to at least know they have somewhere to stay before going to a city, they like to know how long they have, they like to not have $20 a week to live off, they like to not spend money they don't have, they like to rest, and take coffee breaks, not walk around in the pouring rain and the sweltering heat for hours on end like I do. And someone who wasn't like me on a trip like this would drive me insane. It's too much stress to allay their worries and concerns all the time, to deal with their stress over where we're going to sleep the next night. I like travelling alone, and all the freedoms that entails, but sometimes it would be nice if there was someone equally as crazy as me to come with me.
New Orleans and Boston plans have largely been axed, due to a lack of money, which at least means I'm not visiting EVERYWHERE chris wants to go without him. Heading up north tomorrow; hopefully at House Of Blues in Boston tomorrow night if I'm lucky. Then the cape for 4th July. Down to DC to stay with my friend Sean, then I think I'm gonna head over to west coast for a few weeks in California, my home away from home. As for today, I gotta cram all my tourism into today as I thought I'd have tomorrow as well but no longer due to needing to head up North. This probably means I can't go to the anamanaguchi gig tonight :( But instead I shall go to the museums today. I haven't been to the statue of liberty as yet; I shall do that on my return trip in august.
Love and kisses, sorry for the long rather disjointed selection of things to write about, but at least it's keeping you up to date with that's going on with me
Monday, 10 May 2010
Ce bel amor qui ne peut mourir...
I miss you so much. It hurts. Like hell. Every single day. I know you're busy, and out of sight is out of mind, and neither of us have had time or money and your life requires the whole of you. And that's fine, but I still miss you. I still love you. I still want to be with you even though I can't. I miss the feel of you. I miss your smile. I miss the way how you melt into me when I hol you. I miss the wonder and amazement in your eyes, at every little thing in the world. I miss the way nothing is the same around you. I miss the need to try and kill you, because if I don't you'll actually kill me. I miss being the strong one for a change. I hate the fact you're so close and yet so far. I hate you live in the middle of nowhere. I hate that I have virtually no way of contacting you, ever. I'm scared that you hate me. I'm scared you don't actually like me that much anymore. I'm scared I'll never be included in your life. I'm scared you'll be gone before I get to see you one more time. I wonder why it takes us so long to admit we love each other every time we meet. I wonder why we eventually do admit it each time. I wonder when I'll next see, of if I'll even have that option.. I love you. I miss you. I need you. I want you. Please be mine.
Ce bel amor qui ne peut mourir...
I miss you so much. It hurts. Like hell. Every single day. I know you're hurting right now, and me, and us, and all that is probably exactly what you don't need to deal with at this moment. And that's fine, but I still miss you. I still love you. I still want to be with you even though I can't. I miss the feel of you. I miss your smile. I miss the way you'd hold me. I miss the way you look at me, like I'm the one in a higher league. I miss your cocky, arrogant bullshit. I miss fighting with you. I miss you beating me. I hate the fact you're 4500 miles away. I hate the fact I can't just jump on a bus, or a train and come and see you. I hate the fact that will never change. I hate that loving you is just something that will always be in our heads. I hate that too see you even once more, the entire universe would have to shift for me. I'm scared that you'll fall out of love with me. I'm scared you'll forget about me. I'm scared I'll always have to sit on the sidelines and watch. I wonder why you love me. I wonder why you told me you loved me. I wonder when, if ever, I'll next get a chance to see you again. I love you. I miss you. I need you. I want you. Please be mine.
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
A toast to those we love
Don't bother me with your time management issues. As it stands, tomorrow I have 2 tutorials, 2 hours of lectures, an opticians appoitnment, 2 pieces of coursework due in, 2 pieces needing to be done in time for thursday, and at some point I could really do with going to the fabric shops.
And so, quite naturally, I'm blogging.
The play is about 4 weeks away. For those who have spent anytime in the theatre industry, or film or tv for that matter, you'll know there's no such thing as 'part-time'. Especially when you're the fucking producer. That's a 70-odd hour working week to contend with. On top of that, I have to get to my lectures. And do an average of 3 pieces of coursework for each week. And I have labs most days for the next two weeks. I have to do all this whilst contending with some fairly severe insomnia at the moment, which whilst beneficial in the early stages, is slowly becoming more and more detrimental as i become increasingly sleep deprived.
So anyone who complains to me about how they dont have time for x, because they have an essay due, or that they were really tired last night and didn't get around to y, please be prepared for a fairly hostile reaction. On my better days I will throw something in your general direction and walk off. On the worse ones, I'll subject you to a tirade of verbal abuse, whilst simultaneously subjecting you to a tirade of physical abuse too. And not the fun kind of abuse..
I saw vampy last night. For those I don't know, I nickname most of my friends - see http://www.facebook.com/#/group.php?gid=2211953759&ref=ts - there's boring andrew, el diablo, vampy, alex rower, bblb, crazy jack, cute medic, not-so-hot ricki, and so forth... But anyway, back to vampy. I hadn't seen him in ages, and I certainly hadn't seen him properly in about 3 months. But he was in the area, so I visited, and got a free box of krispy kreme donuts (later donated to the classics dept). There was australian comedy, and drinking, and bizzare late night conversations i'm not at liberty to go into. But the dude is awesome.
In fact, it's something I've noticed recently; pretty much any of the people I actually *care* about spending time with (regardless how much i actually get to do so), I love in some way. I think it's cause I had a giant friend cull about 6 months ago, and so now the only people I bother myself with are people that are either in some way useful to me, or people that I can spend hours and hours with and never get bored.
I love Jme because he could make me laugh even if my parents had just died; I love Tania because she's modest to a criminal level; I love Vampy because of his bizzareness and ability to remain completely unjudgemental about all things with me; I love Joel because I don't need to find the words to explain what's going through my head; I love Graham because he's possibly the only person with any form of psychology training that I actually allow some sort of trust in; I love JP because he constantly makes me question why I'm not doing more to live the life I want instead of just accepting the 9-5 monotony of the modern day; I love Jack because he's insane, and broken, and does all the things even I could never dare to do; and I love Chris because he's stable, and keeps me from going off the many edges I seem to quite easily find myself in front of, and because he sees all the things that I could be; and there are others I haven't mentioned that I still love for a million different things.
And I love all these people because they love me in their own ways, and they accept me for who I am, even at my worst, my most hostile and aggressive, my most unattractive - physically and mentally.
Currently, my 5 people are Chris, Joel, Jack, Seany, and Jme. Sorry Lisa, either Seany or you had to go to make room for Jack and currently Seany doesn't cause me play stress every other day :P
Mood: Feeling the pressure; not quite frazzled, but definitely combusting.
Music: http://open.spotify.com/user/jorgamond/playlist/0BIpOp755HRVrFUXWdUX4E
And so, quite naturally, I'm blogging.
The play is about 4 weeks away. For those who have spent anytime in the theatre industry, or film or tv for that matter, you'll know there's no such thing as 'part-time'. Especially when you're the fucking producer. That's a 70-odd hour working week to contend with. On top of that, I have to get to my lectures. And do an average of 3 pieces of coursework for each week. And I have labs most days for the next two weeks. I have to do all this whilst contending with some fairly severe insomnia at the moment, which whilst beneficial in the early stages, is slowly becoming more and more detrimental as i become increasingly sleep deprived.
So anyone who complains to me about how they dont have time for x, because they have an essay due, or that they were really tired last night and didn't get around to y, please be prepared for a fairly hostile reaction. On my better days I will throw something in your general direction and walk off. On the worse ones, I'll subject you to a tirade of verbal abuse, whilst simultaneously subjecting you to a tirade of physical abuse too. And not the fun kind of abuse..
I saw vampy last night. For those I don't know, I nickname most of my friends - see http://www.facebook.com/#/group.php?gid=2211953759&ref=ts - there's boring andrew, el diablo, vampy, alex rower, bblb, crazy jack, cute medic, not-so-hot ricki, and so forth... But anyway, back to vampy. I hadn't seen him in ages, and I certainly hadn't seen him properly in about 3 months. But he was in the area, so I visited, and got a free box of krispy kreme donuts (later donated to the classics dept). There was australian comedy, and drinking, and bizzare late night conversations i'm not at liberty to go into. But the dude is awesome.
In fact, it's something I've noticed recently; pretty much any of the people I actually *care* about spending time with (regardless how much i actually get to do so), I love in some way. I think it's cause I had a giant friend cull about 6 months ago, and so now the only people I bother myself with are people that are either in some way useful to me, or people that I can spend hours and hours with and never get bored.
I love Jme because he could make me laugh even if my parents had just died; I love Tania because she's modest to a criminal level; I love Vampy because of his bizzareness and ability to remain completely unjudgemental about all things with me; I love Joel because I don't need to find the words to explain what's going through my head; I love Graham because he's possibly the only person with any form of psychology training that I actually allow some sort of trust in; I love JP because he constantly makes me question why I'm not doing more to live the life I want instead of just accepting the 9-5 monotony of the modern day; I love Jack because he's insane, and broken, and does all the things even I could never dare to do; and I love Chris because he's stable, and keeps me from going off the many edges I seem to quite easily find myself in front of, and because he sees all the things that I could be; and there are others I haven't mentioned that I still love for a million different things.
And I love all these people because they love me in their own ways, and they accept me for who I am, even at my worst, my most hostile and aggressive, my most unattractive - physically and mentally.
Currently, my 5 people are Chris, Joel, Jack, Seany, and Jme. Sorry Lisa, either Seany or you had to go to make room for Jack and currently Seany doesn't cause me play stress every other day :P
Mood: Feeling the pressure; not quite frazzled, but definitely combusting.
Music: http://open.spotify.com/user/jorgamond/playlist/0BIpOp755HRVrFUXWdUX4E
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
The definition of terror...
... is writing a letter that is going to be sent to Chris Carey, Michael Crawford, Simon Hornblower, Michael Silk, Mary Beard, Pat Easterling, Robin Lane Fox, Oliver Taplin, Paul Cartledge, Simon Goldhill, and a few Sirs and Dames for good measure, among a whole host of 200 odd others.
For those of you not in the know, I just rattled off possibly the most intimidating collection of classics professors ever assembled in history. And I'm asking them to give me 30 seconds of their precious, precious time to bother to read my letter, which asks them to give a good 3 hours of their time, not including travel, to come watch our pithy production of 2 plays from greek tragedy, which they will know infintely more about than any of the people who have been involved in the production, and will most likely involve Simon Goldhill mouthing the Greek to the actors by rote for the entire performance, despite the fact we're doing ours in translation anyway.
And this letter is coming from the boy who already has a black mark against his name, for turning up to an oxbridge sixth form classics day without a booking, next to one girl in fishnet tights, and another with a hipflask sticking out of her front pocket. When my academic career plummets just as surely as Icarus did to his aquatic demise, and UCL reissue my degree at a 3rd, if they even grant me that high a mark after a mysterious 'adminstrative error', pity me and know that this way lay madness, pain, and dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom. I shall print the letter on purple paper just to leave no possible margin for error. And if anybody knows where I can get gold embossed envelopes it would be greatly appreciated.
For those of you not in the know, I just rattled off possibly the most intimidating collection of classics professors ever assembled in history. And I'm asking them to give me 30 seconds of their precious, precious time to bother to read my letter, which asks them to give a good 3 hours of their time, not including travel, to come watch our pithy production of 2 plays from greek tragedy, which they will know infintely more about than any of the people who have been involved in the production, and will most likely involve Simon Goldhill mouthing the Greek to the actors by rote for the entire performance, despite the fact we're doing ours in translation anyway.
And this letter is coming from the boy who already has a black mark against his name, for turning up to an oxbridge sixth form classics day without a booking, next to one girl in fishnet tights, and another with a hipflask sticking out of her front pocket. When my academic career plummets just as surely as Icarus did to his aquatic demise, and UCL reissue my degree at a 3rd, if they even grant me that high a mark after a mysterious 'adminstrative error', pity me and know that this way lay madness, pain, and dooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom. I shall print the letter on purple paper just to leave no possible margin for error. And if anybody knows where I can get gold embossed envelopes it would be greatly appreciated.
Over & Undersleeping
2 days into the new term and I've already missed a lecture.
I overslept through maths today. Well that's not true, I woke up halfway through it. This is not entirely suprising, as I had no sleep Sunday night as I mentioned in my previous post, and so I crashed out at 2300 completely. But still irritating. Still, best to miss the introductory lecture I guess, and to miss maths where there is no lab I need to find out about.
Doesn't look like I'll be sleeping tonight either. Still I'm being productive and doing play things, I'm about to write an endless number of letters to all the VIPs, lecturers, interested parties etc. On thursday I have to oversee a costumes meeting, and by next week, a lot of the big orders should be processed. It's about 4 weeks to go now, we're on schedule, well we're not we're behind it, but we're ok in terms of time, but at the same time the neuroses are starting to get the better of me and panic me slightly. I'm also acutely aware that I need to stay on top of absolutely everything or indeed, beyond it, uni wise, as the weeks preceding the play, and of it, I will have no spare time whatsoever. And by spare time, I mean the time in which one usually eats and sleeps. I know from experience they become mere luxuries and distant, barely discernible memories to myself and the rest of the production team.
Balanced with this, I don't even have the luxury of skipping lectures this time, as I'm not in the department, or indeed university, doing it, so I shall be going to QMUL bright and early each morning, shooting over to UCL for lunchtime to do shows, get ins, tech runs, etc, debriefing for several hours after each night, going home to plan out the next day and do the work for uni and sort out what went wrong with the previous day, eating pure sugar foods to keep myself going, and then back out to QMUL for more learning the next day. And unlike the UCL people, I don't have the luxury of reading week to crash out with immediately following. No, I have another week of lectures, punctuated by several lab report deadlines, from the labs that will inevitably fall within production week, just to make life a little more interesting than it already will be.
And of course, in all of this, I have to plan something suitably epic for valentines day, as its the 2nd one in 6 years I shall be able to spend with the bf, in fact, the 2nd one in a row. Something is seriously wrong...
In a completely different line of thought, a friend, who got rejected from UCL for medicene, posted on his facebook 'XXXXX is is apparently skittish, socially inept, immature, and inarticulate. Thankyou, UCL interviewers >.>" He then revealed in the comment discussion this is not exactly what they said, but his paranoia reading it like that. So I asked him what exactly they did say. He copied and pasted the feedback to me. And unfortuantely for him, it wasn't his paranoia, they almost did exactly say that. This does not bode well for his continued medical aspirations.
Being truthful here, I have to post something potentially hurtful in the full knowledge he might well read this, but oh well. I am inclined, in relation to the above story, to side with the UCL interviewers. The boy is very intelligent, and has done a lot of extra curricular stuff towards medicene, but he is phenomanlly naiive, with no concept of the real world whatsoever (and I really mean no concept, not the no concept you mean when you talk about oxbridge toffs or the like), and does not have the best people skills. He has also stated, that he would likely turn down an offer from a particular university for medicene, because he doesn't actually want to go there, and just needed an extra place to put on the form. Anybody who says this for such a competitive field is asking for a karmic bitchslap methinks. Which appears to be promptly forthcoming as events turn out.
Don't get me wrong, I have sympathy for the boy, I just have to admit I'm not entirely surprised he's currently facing 2/4 rejections, and a fairly damning set of feedback from the easier of the two interviews.
Mood: Weighing the pros of sugar & tea against the cons of the cold downstairs
Music: http://open.spotify.com/user/jorgamond/playlist/1u5Wqh6Ya2FrHniR3riKYc
I overslept through maths today. Well that's not true, I woke up halfway through it. This is not entirely suprising, as I had no sleep Sunday night as I mentioned in my previous post, and so I crashed out at 2300 completely. But still irritating. Still, best to miss the introductory lecture I guess, and to miss maths where there is no lab I need to find out about.
Doesn't look like I'll be sleeping tonight either. Still I'm being productive and doing play things, I'm about to write an endless number of letters to all the VIPs, lecturers, interested parties etc. On thursday I have to oversee a costumes meeting, and by next week, a lot of the big orders should be processed. It's about 4 weeks to go now, we're on schedule, well we're not we're behind it, but we're ok in terms of time, but at the same time the neuroses are starting to get the better of me and panic me slightly. I'm also acutely aware that I need to stay on top of absolutely everything or indeed, beyond it, uni wise, as the weeks preceding the play, and of it, I will have no spare time whatsoever. And by spare time, I mean the time in which one usually eats and sleeps. I know from experience they become mere luxuries and distant, barely discernible memories to myself and the rest of the production team.
Balanced with this, I don't even have the luxury of skipping lectures this time, as I'm not in the department, or indeed university, doing it, so I shall be going to QMUL bright and early each morning, shooting over to UCL for lunchtime to do shows, get ins, tech runs, etc, debriefing for several hours after each night, going home to plan out the next day and do the work for uni and sort out what went wrong with the previous day, eating pure sugar foods to keep myself going, and then back out to QMUL for more learning the next day. And unlike the UCL people, I don't have the luxury of reading week to crash out with immediately following. No, I have another week of lectures, punctuated by several lab report deadlines, from the labs that will inevitably fall within production week, just to make life a little more interesting than it already will be.
And of course, in all of this, I have to plan something suitably epic for valentines day, as its the 2nd one in 6 years I shall be able to spend with the bf, in fact, the 2nd one in a row. Something is seriously wrong...
In a completely different line of thought, a friend, who got rejected from UCL for medicene, posted on his facebook 'XXXXX is is apparently skittish, socially inept, immature, and inarticulate. Thankyou, UCL interviewers >.>" He then revealed in the comment discussion this is not exactly what they said, but his paranoia reading it like that. So I asked him what exactly they did say. He copied and pasted the feedback to me. And unfortuantely for him, it wasn't his paranoia, they almost did exactly say that. This does not bode well for his continued medical aspirations.
Being truthful here, I have to post something potentially hurtful in the full knowledge he might well read this, but oh well. I am inclined, in relation to the above story, to side with the UCL interviewers. The boy is very intelligent, and has done a lot of extra curricular stuff towards medicene, but he is phenomanlly naiive, with no concept of the real world whatsoever (and I really mean no concept, not the no concept you mean when you talk about oxbridge toffs or the like), and does not have the best people skills. He has also stated, that he would likely turn down an offer from a particular university for medicene, because he doesn't actually want to go there, and just needed an extra place to put on the form. Anybody who says this for such a competitive field is asking for a karmic bitchslap methinks. Which appears to be promptly forthcoming as events turn out.
Don't get me wrong, I have sympathy for the boy, I just have to admit I'm not entirely surprised he's currently facing 2/4 rejections, and a fairly damning set of feedback from the easier of the two interviews.
Mood: Weighing the pros of sugar & tea against the cons of the cold downstairs
Music: http://open.spotify.com/user/jorgamond/playlist/1u5Wqh6Ya2FrHniR3riKYc
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
The Theory....
I've had this theory for a long time. That nobody's world is ever bigger than 5 people. 6 degrees of separation probably works off a similar idea. Your 5 people change throughout your life obviously, and sometimes even on a day to day basis, but these are the people closest to you, the ones you tell all your secrets, the ones who if they ever got together, would probably know everything there is to know about you, the ones who support you and keep you going.
When you're a child, your parents are two of them, as you grow up, it becomes friends from school, later your boss, or a partner of some sort might feature. Some of them will be there for a day, and then disappear off again for a few months, some are more or less permenant fixtures.
Currently my world consists of the boyfriend - Chris, a friend named Joel, one of his boys called Seany, another friend called Lisa, and my best and oldest friend called Jamie, who has his birthday sometime around now.
Think of a friend you know really well, you can apply it to them, it might not be the people they talk to or see most, hell I haven't seen Jme in ages, but there's usually not more than 5 of them. Even where couples are concerned, its usually the case that someone is closer with one than the other, because they knew them first, or because they have more in common.
As my 5 people change throughout the year, I'll try and let you know, you might find it interesting.
Music http://open.spotify.com/user/jorgamond/playlist/1MR6CjRCd1bceiiKCQWh5i
Mood: much the same as before, with a bit of depression mixed in.
When you're a child, your parents are two of them, as you grow up, it becomes friends from school, later your boss, or a partner of some sort might feature. Some of them will be there for a day, and then disappear off again for a few months, some are more or less permenant fixtures.
Currently my world consists of the boyfriend - Chris, a friend named Joel, one of his boys called Seany, another friend called Lisa, and my best and oldest friend called Jamie, who has his birthday sometime around now.
Think of a friend you know really well, you can apply it to them, it might not be the people they talk to or see most, hell I haven't seen Jme in ages, but there's usually not more than 5 of them. Even where couples are concerned, its usually the case that someone is closer with one than the other, because they knew them first, or because they have more in common.
As my 5 people change throughout the year, I'll try and let you know, you might find it interesting.
Music http://open.spotify.com/user/jorgamond/playlist/1MR6CjRCd1bceiiKCQWh5i
Mood: much the same as before, with a bit of depression mixed in.
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