mostly theatre talk
I've been volunteering at the community theatre for 3 plays now. They are letting me do some really complex stuff and I'm super pleased with my own work. i haven't been criticised nor sense unspoken disappointment and they all give me high praise. I even got called one of the "two stars of the team" by the head artist/set designer but I suss her praise as she's as free with it as a grade school art teacher. She essentially strives to be a sweet old lady and even bakes a batch of cookies every day to share.
She scares the daylights out of me. I sense this is her ego's home and she will hold it to the last man standing. I have been striving hard to show her enough deference and cheerful agreement to bypass any possible sense of competition she might get. Today she said she thought I was very down to earth. That was about the most unusual compliment I've ever had but when I looked up the general definition, it was a: high praise indeed and b: deeply true and nobody ever seemed to notice it before. I've been working hard on displaying humility, plus my general distrust of compliments has me saying thank you and shifting focus asap, another good trick for signaling humility.
Humility is not a mind set, it's a behaviour set, although it is affected by attitude. However, I can as easily come across as conceited if I am trying to show my skills or explain who I think I am.
It may well be conceit to speak well of oneself but after all, who else will and how else can I get a chance to prove it? I think I am doing far far better than I realize, possibly. Some times I think I'm lucky they are so nice about it, other times I think maybe I'm extraordinarily talented and don't realize it. I mean, you hang with artists, the bar is going to be a lot higher, and your hang zone is also going to have a higher standard. So the lot of you might be extraordinary in ordinary company but never hanging with said persons, you might well be unaware how lofty your group and yourself are.
I've also had my vocabulary mentioned several times. I am a verbose sort of fellow with a lot of creativity so my language is varied and at times florid. I love a good turn of phrase and juicy words make me smile. I explained that I was used to having to dumb down my speech and go with ordinary words and how delightful it was to be in university educated company where I didn't have to.
That, you see, is the thing that drove me here, to talk about how much of me, the real me, is coming out there. I am singing and whistling, bouncing around like a teenager, up stairs 2 at a time sometimes, focusing on the work, using fancy words instead of swearing, and laughing freely. Being about as "me" as I can be in company with others and these folks aren't acting weird about it.
Such a relief!!!! I forgot that's part of why I gravitated towards theatre people, they are much more used to weird. I am definitely the weirdest person there and the only person who might match my vibe is Mitchell, the tempermental important wardrobe dude with a real job out in the paying world of theatre. IOW, the guy I need to get to. Hehe
See, I love to paint, but I can't do it professionally to the degree I might have to. Maybe. I can do this schedule and it'd be worth around $200/day in union wages. I could do this 5 afternoons a week, sure, and on into as late as 9pm when the painting is going well. Even start earlier if I had my bus on site. But, I also need to move sideways into smaller work that let's me sit down while I work. Stuff I can rest my back and do. My back has been taking a beating.
I dunno, I'm just concerned at the energy level this takes up. If I had to do it enough to pay rent and groceries and all the whatnot, I couldn't keep up, I'm sure of it.
I also do not want to do just one thing. I never have, why should I? I would like to get into props and wardrobe. Props here, somehow I feel, like it's instinct, that this is not the time or place to chase that one. Focus on getting the wardrobe's attention while building up a portfolio of actual set painting to show my versatility.
I asked linda how many pics went into a portfolio and she said around 10 and I thought, hell, that won't convey squat, I will make it 24 images grouped in media based categories focusing on skill and versatility. it was funny too that Linda's answer sounded like she thought I would have trouble finding half a dozen and here I have dozens to weed through. This is work I do at the WorkBC office where I can use their electricity and research on their computers and so forth. I could hook into wifi but the laptop won't listen when I tell it no update so if i let it talk to the home planet, it will be force fed code that kills it. They do that. It does't "break" perse but it does become laggy and slow and all the apps break or have to update and then they all want 5x as much internet access to do shady backdoor BS I don't want and they'll be like "you can't use this without logging into the internet" and I don't need my laptop turned into their tool for extracting money from me into the system.
Yeah, so all material from the laptop to the i'net has to exit via cable or card and transfer to an internetted device. It's mildly inconvenient but the laptop hasn't slowed down or gotten viruses or suffered crashes. it still performs the work I need to do, mostly with acdsee photo app and a few art and sound apps, plus accessing external drives, printer, and such. Again, stuff I rather wasn't connected to a network.
Oh, another cute coincidence besides naming my bus MacKay in 2017 and landing next to Mackay creek in 2024 is that the new mailbox address I just bought for the year is only one letter off my old phostal code. The only character that changed was the first one for the city! (well then on second look, I mistook a j for an L so there's 2 out, but still, it's kismet)
It all honestly feels so magical. When I was walking down a metal staircase at the ugliest mall I've ever seen, and the air was filled with that specific vancouver rain, and I suddenly felt like I was finally home and in love with a place where I lived. It was something about the temperature and color and light and wetness that just felt sublime and cinematic and perfect. Even the rusty staircase. Like if I'd been on xtasy when it was just the smell of vancouver rain. I get this same thrill when I look at the lion's gate bridge or across burrard inlet. Every time In the past, North Vancouver always felt like the forbidden palace whence I'd been cast ou. A place I belonged that Would Not Let Me In. More specifically the north shore than the whole region. It's more even than the island hit me. I actually didn't like the island. I liked the nature just fine, of course I did, but something felt off and I know now I couldn't have made this theatre connection in my heart if I had gone anywhere else. It has set my head on a path that has hope and more than a little surety. In the past it was always "yeah, I can probably learn to do that, I can probably perform that job acceptably." But this job, working with theatre art, it's always been "I'd be so good at that and it would be so fun if they'd just let me in. If they would just let me show them what I can do, they'd see, I'm talented, crazy talented, and the theatre is exactly the right kind of art space. Oh if only."
I used to feel like when I hit my 60s, the artist in me would finally get to shine, but I thought I would publish a book, not break into movies and theatre art. Book publishing is a weird business these days involving amazon kindle and google books and talent scouts and agents and ebooks that provide small returns. I just don't think it's lucrative enough for the amount of head banging irritation it requires to get a book published. Why write it at all? It's time that could be used making something else.
I got my wee beasty! Yeah it's been a week now with a little longhaired ginger chihuahua bitch. Oh and she's got the character for the job. She used to run herd on a grown man and his oversized dogs so she has a lot of courage.
Poor thing lost her mom and her twin brother in one year and landed in an unheated bus with 3 large unruly dogs and a man with a temper and a whole lot of grief and stress. Poor baby was just hanging on! Lost her brother to traffic. I think both were constantly escaping trying to find home back and the brother got hit.
I rescued this one from the street 3x and finally told him she was staying. We had been in talks about me adopting her because he already knew he wasn't doing right by her. He had trouble letting go because it felt like letting down his late mother but he has it backwards. Keeping the creature poorly when she has a loving home pining for her would have been far worse. He hasn't visited her or inquired after her for days. I stopped taking her round because she would forget and want to "go home" all night. I have txted him some pics of her but generally he is doing as I expected, forgetting what is not in his face. Hence how she kept escaping.
I've been bringing her to the theatre rather than trust my xolo alone with her just yet and she is the darling of the stage already. I make her stay in the carrier for which she squeaks and creaks like rusty metal and everyone laughs. I did go over and shush her a couple of times when she got annoyed at being ignored.
Oh and it's late for doggy supper, gotta stop this now. c'aio 4 now