One of the courses I signed up for this semester is a performing arts lab. When I signed up, I did not know that the format of the class would be workshop based. There are five of them, each a week long, and you are required to attend three of your own choosing. So really, instead of meeting every Tuesday night from 5 to 830, there are three weeks of the semester where I go to class every night of each week from 5 to 10; the other ten or so weeks have no class sessions. Each workshop is held by a different visiting artist, each with different backgrounds.
This past week, I experienced my first workshop with Pat Payne, who is a spoken word poet. I was hesitant to sign up for this workshop, as I've never been much a fan of poetry, but seeing her perform really opened my eyes to what poetry can be. The workshop itself opened my eyes even further. Having no experience with performing arts of any kind, this workshop was really intense for me, but also the most fun I've had in a while - I actually looked forward to going to each five hour session every night. The workshop taught a lot about stage presence, and how to perform in front of an audience. We did all kinds of ridiculous exercises, often embarrassing, and I was surprised by how much I was able to open up around people I'd never met.
The workshop culminated in a student performance on Friday night, where students performed poetry ranging from simple recitations to full blown performance pieces. My piece was one of the latter. Taking much inspiration from Pat, I did a piece about (what else?) DDR. Using one of my old dance mats as a prop, I created a performance piece about how I've used DDR not only as an effective exercise tool, but as a way to relieve stress, defeat my inner demons, and gain control over myself. I related the act of stomping arrows to the act of ridding myself of my problems, with the arrows representing little bits of adversity, and the act of stomping my foot and making arrows disappear synonymous with the act of making my problems disappear and regaining control of my emotions. Like many, I ended up touching on some sensitive subjects during my performance, and I was surprised in myself to find that I could reveal these things in front of an audience mainly comprised of strangers (I was happy that Lona and John both came to see my performance.) Despite this, I also kept it light, and was glad the I got a good amount laughter from the jokes I threw in. Being that many of the other student pieces were ultra personal, pour-your-guts-out kinds of works, I wanted to use the humor to sort of differentiate myself, and I think it worked. All in all, the whole experience was unlike any I'd been through before - this was not my first time on stage (I'd been in several band concerts in high school), but this was the first time I came out all on my own, in a setting where I was the spotlight, and did something completely original and self-composed. I think it all went really well and I hope the next workshop provides a similar opportunity.
One of the more interesting and delightful side effects of this performing arts class is that I am finding myself talking more to my peers at school. Not since high school have I bothered to talk to anyone at school, much less hold conversations. My class is filled with many cool and interesting people, and I think our shared experience of embarrassing ourselves in front of each other has been a good social catalyst. Many of these people I'd seen in other courses at CSUSM before, but not until now have I spoken with any of them or even gotten to know most of their names; hopefully this new trend continues.
My other classes have not been anywhere near this caliber of experience. I still hate foreign language, my Tech and Social Change class has some interesting readings but ultimately boring lectures, and not a whole lot has happened in my video class yet. However, I do have a couple people in my video class that are also in performance lab, so I'm hoping that knowing these people will make collaborations on film projects down the line a little more fun. Despite my rather bland class lineup, I've found an interesting past time in going to school: running up the largest staircase on campus and up to the top of the arts building at least once everyday. Now that I've finally met my weight loss goal of 205, same as it reads on my drivers license (or, as Lona put it, now that I'll no longer be lying to cops when they pull me over,) I find the stairs a much easier foe to defeat. It's bizarre to think that the last time I had to climb said stairs I was 40 pounds heavier. Since they are no longer an issue for me, I'm going to continue running up the stairs everyday, and then maybe graduate to seeing how many times I can run up and down them in a row. Sounds crazy, I know, but this is all really exciting for me.
News on the work front is scarce. I have no projects to work on, and this has been the slowest Fall season since 2003, so hours have been hard to grab. I am finding myself promoting High School Musical 3, mainly because I think my boss is trying to give me something to keep me occupied. I am terrified that, through this, I am going to become completely hooked on the High School Musical franchise - I've never seen any of the HSM movies, but after watching the trailer for the third installment a few times, I can't stop singing the songs to myself, and I fear that a viewing of the first two films is in my inevitable future.
Thursday night held yet another bonfire. It's strange - a year ago, no one I knew (including myself) had the energy or organizational skills to pull one of these bonfires together, and now it feels like they happen every couple of weeks or so.This particular bonfire really tested my limits physically. It started with sumo wrestling with nearly everyone in attendance; since this was an activity I did not participate in at the last bonfire, everyone wanted a chance to take me down. It finally took two guys to do it (on their second attempt.) In the process, I got hit in the eye with someones forehead, I was accidentally punched in the nose, and I almost dislocated my right arm when Jay jumped on me. A game of kickball followed. I joined mid game, when my team was already losing (I honestly can't remember where I was during the first part,) but we continued losing until we all decided to stop keeping score. I think around 10 innings were played, and I fell and slid numerous times, all adding to my injuries.
What finally destroyed me was our ultimate experiment in hole digging. Having already dug a five feet hole, I was buried (along with Jay and Dorian) while standing up. Once finished, everyone flat out refused to un-bury us. In attempting to wiggle, stretch, and finally dig out of the pit, I managed to pull muscles I didn't even know I had. Standing shoulder to shoulder made it difficult to move, and the fact that we were put in a pre-dug hole caused the pit to act as a vacuum; the more we dug, the tighter the dirt's grasp became. It probably took us a good half an hour to break free. Between that and the aforementioned activities, I am still sore all over, a whole three days later. Thank God for the Davis family spa.
All in all, I find my life calming down in general, feeling much less stressful and relaxing, despite my busier schedule. I'm not sure why it's turned out that way, but I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts. As a kind of end-of-summer tribute, here's a video I threw together - It's basically a recap of my summer, minus the drama. Almost no effort was put into this; I pretty much just took a bunch of images and dropped them into Photostory and let it do all the work, but it still turned out nice I think.
Looks like I've ended up writing much more than I set out to this evening, so it's time to find my end point. I'm getting up in the morning to go to Universal Studios with buddies Laura and Vince, as Laura is leaving on Wednesday to study abroad in Scotland for a year and I want to spend as much time with her as possible in the next two days.
I wish I could end this very long ramble with something insightful, but it's just too late to think at the moment, so I'll use one I think I've already used before:
"Don't fake the funk on a nasty dog" -Homsar
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