200th post!
Aside from that, life is going well. Hecuba rehearsals awesome with the addition of the chorus, though Cheolseung has dropped out (directing a show going up on the exact same day in Korea, unfortunately, with no options to move the time), but we're getting a friend of Clare's at UCLA to do it, which should be cool and allow for great mind-fuckery as they'll start on separate screens and eventually he'll invade hers to have a real dialogue.
Academics? Handed a Philosophy essay in last week, which turned out not bad after I decided it was going to be crap and taught me a valuable lesson--simplify! Going in with no agenda, I was able to really just focus on the question without exploring any of my side tangents and wrote a decently compact essay. I have one on Islam in this Friday, where I'll try to convince the Divinity department that Islam isn't really evil and they should give its beliefs a chance rather than just being like, "and they like submitting and think God is wrathful and it's basically just Christianity but with more rules and we don't like all those rules, now do we?" And then the next week the fabulous social audit that I have yet to start and should REALLY get a move on.
Cleaned up the house for an inspection tomorrow. Discovered floor.
Claimed floor in the name of the queen.
Had an art piece (all the post-it notes I doodled on last year stuck together in a sort of brain-like mass hung from a shoe string) at a student art exhibit, which was cool. Been reading about Hume, who makes me want Kant, and Islam, and having very boring but important lectures in Sustainable Development about accounting and law. Pffffft. Girlfriend still going strong, to our mutual surprise. She encourages rule-breaking, which is good; snuck on a bus for an Art History field trip to Edinburgh on Saturday and pissed about the city for the day for free. Scotland-Ireland rubgy was on that day, but every single person I saw was supporting Ireland. Says something about Scottish rugby. Or about Edinburgh really being Scotland.
Starting to think about the Easter holidays, and what I want to do. I've got a week and a half before I have to be back. What do I want to do? Is the dollar strong anywhere in the world?
Monday, March 16, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
And I'm feeling good...
Just submitted an essay. Probably the least amount of time I've ever spent on one here, but disturbingly I feel this is an improvement. Didn't go off-topic, didn't feel the need to contribute anything new and interesting and half-formed (well, maybe in a couple footnotes...), just regurgitated the arguments and slapped on a conclusion. But I have to say it's one of the most focused essays I've ever written, and I think I narrowed down the topic sufficiently since I didn't get my laptop back in time to do any extensive research. Now on to write the one for next week...
As procrastination, finished an art project to be displayed as part of the V-Day campaign (the campaign is a big violence against women thing), which is cool...it's good to be doing visual stuff again, I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed it. Basically took a whole bunch of post-it notes I'd doodled on last year and made a...thing. Taped them all together so they look like a sort of deformed ship and hung them by a shoelace. 3D ART! It's kinda fun, and that gets displayed this Sunday. Been working on Hecuba and Godspell a whole huggy bunch, and really should kick my ass back into writing now that I've got the laptop back.
We've had some good lectures in Sustainable Development on marketing and accounting, which manage to be interesting from this perspective because they're very "protect yourself from Satan!", and are moving on from Leibniz and Descartes to Hume in Philosophy, who I think I'll appreciate a lot more. World Religions has degraded into us watching videos of dumb UK muslims on the Hajj, which is great and informative and completely misses the point. I suppose it's inevitable that we focus on rituals and traditions, but spending 2 full days on the trivialities of a make-it-if-you-can pilgrimage (Saudi Arabia is hot? Busses are crowded? You have to sleep in tents? I'm learning so much about religion!) when you've got 5-a-day prayer and loads of current controversy over whether Islam makes people blow themselves up or not seems really silly.
Not sure where the time goes.
As procrastination, finished an art project to be displayed as part of the V-Day campaign (the campaign is a big violence against women thing), which is cool...it's good to be doing visual stuff again, I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed it. Basically took a whole bunch of post-it notes I'd doodled on last year and made a...thing. Taped them all together so they look like a sort of deformed ship and hung them by a shoelace. 3D ART! It's kinda fun, and that gets displayed this Sunday. Been working on Hecuba and Godspell a whole huggy bunch, and really should kick my ass back into writing now that I've got the laptop back.
We've had some good lectures in Sustainable Development on marketing and accounting, which manage to be interesting from this perspective because they're very "protect yourself from Satan!", and are moving on from Leibniz and Descartes to Hume in Philosophy, who I think I'll appreciate a lot more. World Religions has degraded into us watching videos of dumb UK muslims on the Hajj, which is great and informative and completely misses the point. I suppose it's inevitable that we focus on rituals and traditions, but spending 2 full days on the trivialities of a make-it-if-you-can pilgrimage (Saudi Arabia is hot? Busses are crowded? You have to sleep in tents? I'm learning so much about religion!) when you've got 5-a-day prayer and loads of current controversy over whether Islam makes people blow themselves up or not seems really silly.
Not sure where the time goes.
Saturday, March 07, 2009
and life goes on
sample of today (sans caps):
woke up. went back to bed. woke up. bed. woke up.
round midday now. went to the byre youth theatre group to say i needed two kids for hecuba. very nice people, took my information. went to pm's and got a burger and chips. ate.
godspell rehearsal for 3 hours, dancing. hecuba rehearsal for an hour, monologues, much easier to work than they have been. tomorrow is a putting it together day.
back to the flat for dinner and working on the essay that's due tuesday. then to a party. then home.
woke up. went back to bed. woke up. bed. woke up.
round midday now. went to the byre youth theatre group to say i needed two kids for hecuba. very nice people, took my information. went to pm's and got a burger and chips. ate.
godspell rehearsal for 3 hours, dancing. hecuba rehearsal for an hour, monologues, much easier to work than they have been. tomorrow is a putting it together day.
back to the flat for dinner and working on the essay that's due tuesday. then to a party. then home.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Lappy's Back!
Got my laptop back last night, and it's good to have it--just in time! First assignments are due in next week.
So, blog posts should hopefully start getting more frequent.
So, blog posts should hopefully start getting more frequent.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Jesus
Busy life. So, where did we leave off last time?
Classes: Introduction to World Religions (with a prof from Chile!), Modern Philosophy (load of Cartesian bleh so far), and SD: Social and Economic Aspects (some decent stuff and more of the same--have to do a social audit of a company that at least operates in the UK--any suggestions?).
Plays: Auditioned and cast the_trojan_queen, a take on Euripedes' Hecuba I'm directing going up in April. Last night (!) finished Titus Andronicus (played the Roman emperor Saturninus, as an overgrown kid) which was good to finish up, as we've been in rehearsals all semester. Week before that finished 4.48 Psychosis, which I co-directed and rehearsed in the two weeks after exams. Have been cast in and had a few rehearsals for Godspell--get some singing in, and it's with good people.
Had my (American) debit card stolen and used to buy loads of stuff, so cancelled that and getting money back. Had taken money out shortly before it was stolen and only ran out yesterday, which was when I discovered my (Scottish) bank card, which I haven't used in a while, is inactive. Bank closes early on Saturday--closed on Sunday--so I've got to go in and give myself purchasing power this Monday. Laptop also conveniently broke down (same bloody screen issue) so that's got to go into Glasgow at some point...A pain because everything I need to read is online so I can't be bothered buying books--need to just print stuff out.
On the upside, sort of stumbled my way into a relationship, so that's fun. Also have been a bit involved in the occupation of one of the old Uni buildings to demand that the university make some concessions around Gaza, mainly (for me) stopping buying water from a subsidiary of a company that takes water from the Golan Heights, and accepting research money (and direction) from arms manufacturers. Nice way to meet hippies, some cool people.
Have been watching nothing, listening to nothing, and reading very little. Life should be a lot freer now Titus is done, so hopefully I'll be living more like a real person instead of shunting back and forth between my aforementioned activities and woes.
Classes: Introduction to World Religions (with a prof from Chile!), Modern Philosophy (load of Cartesian bleh so far), and SD: Social and Economic Aspects (some decent stuff and more of the same--have to do a social audit of a company that at least operates in the UK--any suggestions?).
Plays: Auditioned and cast the_trojan_queen, a take on Euripedes' Hecuba I'm directing going up in April. Last night (!) finished Titus Andronicus (played the Roman emperor Saturninus, as an overgrown kid) which was good to finish up, as we've been in rehearsals all semester. Week before that finished 4.48 Psychosis, which I co-directed and rehearsed in the two weeks after exams. Have been cast in and had a few rehearsals for Godspell--get some singing in, and it's with good people.
Had my (American) debit card stolen and used to buy loads of stuff, so cancelled that and getting money back. Had taken money out shortly before it was stolen and only ran out yesterday, which was when I discovered my (Scottish) bank card, which I haven't used in a while, is inactive. Bank closes early on Saturday--closed on Sunday--so I've got to go in and give myself purchasing power this Monday. Laptop also conveniently broke down (same bloody screen issue) so that's got to go into Glasgow at some point...A pain because everything I need to read is online so I can't be bothered buying books--need to just print stuff out.
On the upside, sort of stumbled my way into a relationship, so that's fun. Also have been a bit involved in the occupation of one of the old Uni buildings to demand that the university make some concessions around Gaza, mainly (for me) stopping buying water from a subsidiary of a company that takes water from the Golan Heights, and accepting research money (and direction) from arms manufacturers. Nice way to meet hippies, some cool people.
Have been watching nothing, listening to nothing, and reading very little. Life should be a lot freer now Titus is done, so hopefully I'll be living more like a real person instead of shunting back and forth between my aforementioned activities and woes.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Results back
Nothing much to report (or interest in doing so, these weeks--when the semester starts I'll actually have a lot more free time and interact with a lot less people [funny thing that], and so blog more). Did, however, get my exam results back. Both 15s, which is dead in the middle of the 2:1 range, as I expected. Without bombing or miraculous acing that's where my coursework put me. It's a funny relationship to work I have at the moment. For quite a while there in High School there was college looming overhead (and parents!), and first year quite a drive to prove myself. However, this year, exploring other areas and with the knowledge that my work only starts counting toward my degree -next- year (and of course lack of parental hovering!), I find that my relationship has changed. It's still stuff that I really enjoy doing, that I'll do extra reading for and try to make connections with through everything, but while the material is more enjoyable than last year, I feel completely relaxed (not necessarily in a good way) about assessment. I know I need to start kicking into gear, as the years of course scale up in difficulty nice and quickly.
As for next semester, still not sure if I want to take the English drama class or the Divinity world religions, though I'm leaning toward religions, if only to have some non-theatre life.
As for next semester, still not sure if I want to take the English drama class or the Divinity world religions, though I'm leaning toward religions, if only to have some non-theatre life.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
I swear the blog isn't defunct!
I've just been exhausted. Haven't done anything non-drama for the last week--6 hour rehearsals per day for Psychosis (which stretches out to 7 or 8 hours counting the time Harry and I spend planning the next day and talking about the structure of the show), so that's a full-time job, and then on top of it meeting every other day or so with Clare for 2-3 hours to work on Hecuba (from here on referred to as the_trojan_queen, since no one will know 'Hecuba'). It's a really good time, actually, very productive and artistic, though I am not reading nearly as much as I would like, damn internet.
Not too much else to report. Psychosis is going quite well, we're already over 1/2 blocked and have a bit more than a week left before we go up (which normally sounds terrifying but the rehearsal time for this is only 2 weeks and a bit). It's a really interesting project, lots of new stuff for me: working with a co-director, short rehearsal time, a play-length poem with no parts divided or stage directions, a complete faithfulness to the text. I feel a lot less ownership and authorship than I'm used to, more like a manager than an artist, but that's not bad, and partly just means that the cast have come up with quite a bit of the show themselves--though that's always the case. I am excited about the idea of challenging myself in theatre. It merges intellectual, social, emotional, and physical stimulation in a way that I don't know anything else does.
Because it's break things are really slow around here, thought they should be picking up as people start coming back. I know if it wasn't for Psychosis I'd have gone insane with boredom a while ago.
Not too much else to report. Psychosis is going quite well, we're already over 1/2 blocked and have a bit more than a week left before we go up (which normally sounds terrifying but the rehearsal time for this is only 2 weeks and a bit). It's a really interesting project, lots of new stuff for me: working with a co-director, short rehearsal time, a play-length poem with no parts divided or stage directions, a complete faithfulness to the text. I feel a lot less ownership and authorship than I'm used to, more like a manager than an artist, but that's not bad, and partly just means that the cast have come up with quite a bit of the show themselves--though that's always the case. I am excited about the idea of challenging myself in theatre. It merges intellectual, social, emotional, and physical stimulation in a way that I don't know anything else does.
Because it's break things are really slow around here, thought they should be picking up as people start coming back. I know if it wasn't for Psychosis I'd have gone insane with boredom a while ago.
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