Friday, September 26, 2008

And I didn't do a theatre degree because...?

Matriculated today. The lineup for this semester looks like:

Semester 1:
Ancient Philosophy
Sustainable Development (Science)
Mandarin Chinese for Beginners (evening course--marked but no credit)

Semester 2:
Modern Philosophy Descartes to Kant
Sustainable Development (Arts)
Drama: Reading and Performance (a second year English module with no pre-requisites...it's either that or Comparative Religions, but seeing as how the school of divinity is completely nutsoid and I'm soon to be churning out plays faster than I can count, figured a drama literary class might be ok to fill the 20 credits I need).

Also in the first semester, directing 1984 (whose name will probably need to be something else due to lovely copyright, and whose auditions are this wednesday and thursday), starting up TROUPE, my outdoor performance...thing. About which I know very little, despite it being 100% my project. But I've got some ideas, along the lines of doing surreal public performance to highlight the mundanity (is that a word?) of modern life and see if we can't do some performance psychology in making people question their routines. And I'm in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe". Well, the societies fayre is yet to come, so we'll see what else I end up with.

On the "intimate feelings online" end, this week has been bizzare. On the bus into St Andrews I scrawled on a piece of paper: "When you feel a kind of ironic detatchment from a place--that's when you know you're home". Remains true. Seen lots of old people, met a few new people, mostly solidified aquantinces with old people who I really didn't know but had seen around. Have talked to very few Freshers. Have spent a lot of time alone, and it's actually been a bit lonely for the past few days. I do miss having someone to go around with in the afternoons--even something as simple as Robbie and I last year "I'm going to pop down to Tesco"--"I'll come with you". It's a decently productive solitude, but still. Got a bit stressed about what lectures I could take since SD conflicts with every f*ing thing I wanted to do second semester, and the cues were not great. But nights out have been consistently good, though it's interesting to see who maintains the "let's go out all the time!" attitude and who is now too "grown up" for such childish persuits! Both strike me as a bit silly. I really want to form some meaningful relationships. Yeah, well, we'll see. That kind of thing doesn't happen because of wishing.

3 comments:

Artdroid said...

In order to form "meaningful attachments", you have to let go of "ironic detachment" a bit and make yourself a little vulnerable. I recognize this is not easily done.....:-)

tsonia said...

Good to hear from you, Brian. It'll be interesting to see what this year brings for you...

swallace said...

Buyers regret?? Didn't you notice that your friends who are majoring in theater are doing a lot less theater than you :-) In any case, it sounds like an interesting year academically.