Wednesday morning

Things are just starting to wrap up...Have finished all of my acting for this semester and am focusing on my play, Asylum, which goes up this weekend and is, fortunately, starting to look good. Working on it has been a huge challenge--its an original play that we've been workshopping since last December, but the hecticness of people's schedules in St Andrews means that it has actually been a challenge to get the whole cast (only 7 people) in a single space (also a challenge to find) for any length of time...that has been really frustrating. But, despite that, I think we'll put up a solid show.

Originally my review essay was due in this Thursday, which would have meant this week would've been a panicked work week, but due to an unfortunate slip on the part of the module coordinator the deadline has been pushed back to next Tuesday. I am grateful for that, at least.

That 'end of the semester' feeling is definitely hitting us, everyone stressed with dissertations and exams and a healthy dose of can't-be-fucked-ness. It's warm and actually a bit muggy out, light from 6am to 9pm, good weather for exploring and being on the grass and not great weather for sitting inside working. Something is in bloom that has my nose in fits.

It's unseemly to gush to individuals so I'll just do it in the general direction of the public domain:

Got another 20 (of 20) on a biology essay, as I found out from Cresswell (the lecturer--picture a 12-year-old bird enthusiast, completely unabashed in his love for animals, grown into a professor without losing any of that enthusiasm) in front of the whole class. Being a good statistician, he shows everyone the regression on the class grades and compares them to last time--the Sustainable Development students have alternative assessment, so he leaves those out (confounding variables--they're marked differently), but after gushing about the class's positive performance he goes on "and the alternative assessment were at a high standard too...Brian--where's Brian [he finds me in the lecture hall of probably 50 people] you've done it again. If you want to learn how to write essays, talk to this man. He writes the best essays I've had from undergraduates, [a brief pause--almost as an afterthought] ever. [I do the shifty-eyes embarrassed thing] Are you embarrassed now?" But all said in a wonderful jovial way, not an Ender's Game 'single him out so everyone hates him!' way (thinking of certain nameless high school teachers...), but in a great 'we're all in this together, well done' way.

Anyway, that's the whole story. Time to go finish this history essay, or as much as I can. And memorise Antigone. And go to the gym later on. And then rehearsal. Ah life!

Best way to motivate a blog post: try to write an essay

So much has been going on. From last Monday-Sunday I have been in performances for three shows, 'The Diary of Anne Frank', 'I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change', and 'The Tempest'. Busy, busy week. Also saw lots of people, wrote my review essay (the final draft is due next week), and I'm sure did loads of other really exciting stuff that I don't remember fully at the moment. This weekend was the launch party for the On The Rocks theatre festival, and I'm in Antigone (Greek tragedy) this Friday and have a cameo in Five Go Mad in Dorset (piss-take of the quintessential British War-era kid's story) on Saturday, as well as reading some stories for an audience tonight.

Am currently working on a history essay, topic: Compare and contrast Upton Sinclair's 'The Jungle' and Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring' within the history of dangerous environments. Interesting stuff, lots of unexpected parallels around reactions to modernism and technology, framed within turn-of-the-century and 1960s thought.

In terms of summer plans, I heard back from Larry, who I met this last summer in China, and if everything works out it looks like I will be in Shanghai working for his company and possibly in Beijing doing green-tech stuff, both of which would be phenomenal...all in very preliminary stages right now, but sounding very cool.

I'll try to get more regular updates in that won't just be laundry-lists.

When last we spoke and what has passed in the meantime

Quite a bit.

Today: 11 hours of rehearsal from 8.30am (I am in a performance every night from this Monday to Sunday, for 3 different plays), then dinner and a quick social event. Knackered.

Previously: Went to Nethy Bridge, a tiny town in the Cleghorns (Highlands Scotland) for three days with the cast of Anne Frank. Really fun lot of people, and spending a few days solid with people you always get to know them better and in ways other than the standard mask-wearing competition. I think particularly because I had been asked the day before and knew that I would be with these people for the next week, tops, I was incredibly friendly and, moreover, open. Results were positive.

In the last leg of the bus ride we discovered that the bus from Aviemore (small town) to Nethy Bridge (town? several buildings...) hadn't run in years. We got a friend who had driven to pick some of us up, but there were too many for the car so I said 'Fine--which way is the town? I'll hitch. Who's in?!' and proceeded to on a hitchhiking adventure with a girl I just met. Got picked up by a digger in a minivan and found Nethy Bridge after getting only slightly lost. Good experience, all in all.

Then, in Nethy, that first night I was feeling brave etc, and somehow the little journal I've been carrying around came up. It started as a project like "A Treatise on the Wars, Sex & Thought of Men and Monsters" (see 'Little Brown Book of White Lies' on facebook albums) that I did in the Balkans, but in recent weeks has turned into a rant/poetry book of really quite personal (and occasionally depraved) stuff. On an impulse, I said "here"--and handed two complete strangers my most intimate thoughts of the last two weeks. Aside from being a great instigator to conversation, it was such a liberating experience, and I felt like it immediately erased any of my mental barriers or inhibitions. As an instigator to conversation, I think it made others open up a lot to relate, and definitely broke all the 'first meeting' rules.

As far as the general experience, it was great. My part is quite small, so I was able to use most of the time to memorize lines for other shows and do reading for tobacco crop substitution. It was definitely a theatre trip--most of our drinking games were warm-up games adapted for drinking when you messed up. It was refreshing, honestly, compared to say, card games where you just sort of play Russian Roulette with gin, no skill involved. 'Big Booty' is a personal favourite, and becomes more fun when you introduce comedy accents. It was cool to be in a place where people both felt comfortable and wanted to be moving and emoting and engaging.

Back in St Andrews, realised that the first draft of my review essay is due in this Thursday, so that's my major project this week...I have written about 4000 words in the last 3 days, so I'm feeling fairly good about it (surprisingly). I also have a history essay in for the Friday after next that I need to figure out...though I think that will come a bit later. I am looking forward to starting lectures again tomorrow (today). Academics...hmm...

I'll end with a poem, as I do.

Morning hoar

On the chilly breast of dawn

Mantles morning faces

As they approach, pass, and are gone

Seeping into morning silence

As its disturbed by cars and birds

Until the Memory of Silence

Is gone in deed, though spared in words

We sit in coffee shops

With drooping faces, tired hooded eyes

Crawl out from secret morning spaces

To find our places on the silent streets of dawn

Cold and overcaffinated

Shuddering into daytime occupations

Morning hoar

On the beating breast of dawn

Mysterious morning faces

Elude me as they approach, pass

And are gone.

Stochasticity

Is just a fancy word for randomness. Biologists seem to like it, talking about a 'stochastic system' makes it sound a hell of a lot more like you know what you are talking about than saying 'yeah, it's a pretty random system'.

Let's call it serendipity instead: I'm in another play. A production of The Diary of Anne Frank is going up next week it turns out one of the actors (bit part, 3 lines, apparently) can't make the mandatory 3-day intensive rehearsal at a cottage in the highlands, so I'm going instead! Am I going for the Nazis or for the holiday? Time will tell...

So that's me off for a wee bit. It should be really good for me working, actually, as the internet appears to be my nemesis when it comes to work. I'll print out the articles I'd bookmarked and gone "good enough!" for and actually read them. Or, so I think. I think it'll also be brilliant social times--I got closer to the biologists I lived with for a week this summer in that week than most of the people I've met this year. Should be interesting times. It means putting off the gym-going and guitar-learning goals I've had for this week, but so be it!

I have gotten back into writing again with a good flow, which is really nice. Have also committed to a 1000-word-a-day goal, 500 words of essay and 500 for please. I have kept said goal exactly...once. But goals are a good start, at least.

So, blog silence for a few days. I'll let you know how it all goes. And, of course, leave you with a poem of mine, or a fragment of one:

Shall I read you what I’ve written

So you’ll know where I have been?

Shall I paint a pretty picture?

No? Then where should I begin?

I could write ten thousand tales,

I could spin a hundred yarns,

Even tell you where I’m headed

Leave you with a crown of thorns.

I could lay it out in verse,

I could stand it up in song.

I could sail there and back again

Before the telling was too long.

I could shake you by the shoulders,

I could grip you by the ears,

I could wail on all night,

Or else unfold it through the years.

But tell me where I should begin,

And how I should proceed

Tell me—extol me—allow my voice

To scream! To speak! At least, to read.

What does this mean?

Wrote a poem just now. Not sure what it means. Have a go:

Greedy clouds consume the sun
To the off-key singing of children
With grass-stained knees
(Bless them, their hearts are really in it!)
Glass-stained children sing down the sun
Whose light grasps feebly at the treetops
And slips away.
The children laugh and roll in the grass.
They start a new song--
The noise of construction (a new motorway)
Lays down their backing track.
The grass is slick,
Children muddy.
The sun will not come out again today.

Have spent the last few days (Tues-Thurs) visiting friends in Stirling and Falkirk, which was fun. Scotland really is small...it was nice not to cook for myself for a wee bit, and good to get a change of scenery, though really I didn't do anything terribly differently from what I would've done at St Andrews. I'm back in town now, and it's pretty dead, but that's good for my productivity at least.

I've watched all of the episodes of Glee that are avaliable so far. An intelligent High School Musical formula knock-off, it poses some great dicey situations and characters you love to hate and then are conflicted about (everyone gets sympathetic and dicey moments) while maintaining a really strong message about self-acceptance and -expression. And fully choreographed musical numbers, of course. And even here, the minority characters are token stereotypes (which one epsiode comes dangerously close to realising, but keeps it in the safe realm of parody). It's been a good distraction.

Also further thinking and planning around Romeo and Juliet for next year. We are looking at all sorts of funding and talking about turning it into a week-long event with a couple of shows (NOT all directed by me, whew) and various lectures/readings/workshops and things around a general Shakespeare theme, which would be a blast (also, a huge pain in the ass to organise...but worth it). More on that to come.