The Opposite of Playfulness

I'm learning to loosen up and be more playful, but it's hard. It's hard because I care about doing things well, and how things turn out, and my assumption has always been that that requires a certain amount of vigilance. I think playfulness and vigilance are opposites in that way.

If it's OK to get one's knowledge of cowboys from Tim McGraw songs (and why wouldn't it be?), you're not supposed to worry about the fall. You just ride the bull with all you've got. I'm generally not so good at that. When I land, I think "Dang, I landed. That wasn't cool." And I want to avoid it.

So I'm on the hunt for the cowboy in me. Or my inner knife juggler. Or stunt pilot. Or whatever other profession involves near-crazy levels of not-focusing on the potential hazards, and keeping your eye on the sparkly prize instead.

Oh dear. My job in publishing production is all about project management and spotting problems before they become problems. Vigilance. Undoubtedly a useful skill, but hmmm.

What's with the Pervy Vampires?

It's not so much that I want a vampire. I'm just annoyed that they don't want me.

All these movies and TV shows about guys who become vampires at age 17 or so. They get all undead and, naturally (unnaturally?) stop aging. At least physically. But if that happened to you a hundred years ago, surely the last century has brought its share of life experience. Emotionally, then, what could you possibly have in common with a high school girl? The not-yet-legal 16-year-old. Really?

OK, I can understand not wanting to date someone close to your age at that point. And you've probably given up on finding somebody who understands cultural references from your true youth ("Boy, wasn't W.C. Fields a scream in his Vaudeville days?"). But have you not matured at all? Do you not want someone who's at least old enough to vote, and maybe has a job?

Say, a youthful 34?

What a Difference a Day Makes...

...24 little hours...

Last night did a lot to improve my mood. Relational difficulties smoothed over, and an improv performance that I feel good about (and will continue to feel good about until our coach tells me to feel otherwise on Saturday). So today brings the kind of happiness that comes from relief. It's pretty nice.

In unrelated news, a coworker is leaving to study for a year in Edinburgh. I am jealous. Castles and tartan and Scottish accents. Yum.

Oh, and my voice is back! I got to do some voice-over work for my company today, and I dig doing it. I'm not allowed to be compensated in addition to my salary, so the editor has offered to bake me cookies. I'll take it! I've asked for chocolate chip. Yum.

That Didn't Take Long

Well, it's begun.

I do something assertive which, while it might not feel like a big deal to me, is not in line with the super-nice, submissive Holly people get used to, and I get a very strong, negative reaction. This is a pattern.

The question: Will I retreat from these situations? They are extremely unpleasant.

My answer: No. The world is going to have to get used to a less submissive Holly.

You know what other sorta-plural noun you can use with singular verbs?

Data. You don't have to, but you can (at least according to The American Collegiate Dictionary's usage panel).

Oh, and I have another grammar issue to address: The use of plural verbs with singular nouns that denote groups. Have I talked about this with you guys already?

I first noticed folks using plural verbs this way in England (The band are late for their gig). They were so consistent about it that I assumed it was one of those things that's considered correct on one side of the ocean when it's incorrect on the other. But a year or two ago, a friend sent me a British article wherein people described their grammatical pet peeves, and this was in there. According to the article, it's correct to use singular verbs when the noun itself is singular, even when the noun denotes a group -- and even if that group is in England. That bunch of grapes is sour. His family has no respect for his career as a monkey trainer. Congress is deadlocked.

The article then said that BBC guidelines make exceptions for bands (as in musical groups) and sports teams. I confess I'm not a huge fan of these exceptions, because we get a feel for language by hearing it, and this just puts noun-verb disagreement into people's heads as something that sounds right all the time.

As with just about everything else grammatical, I'm not going to go around interrupting people in mid-sentence just to correct them on this. Which means it will probably just get worse, and I'll have to deal with it. So thanks for putting up with my blog posts about it. Apart from family conversations at holidays, I might not have many other chances to vent about this stuff.

Does that make my family weird? If so, my family is weird. Not my family are weird.

Improv and Whispers

I felt so much better about our improv show this week than I did about last week's. We'll see what our coach has to say about it on Saturday. It's interesting that being a good improviser means being comfortable as yourself. Lots of my current pursuits require that I be comfortable with who I am, and real about it with other people. Easier said than done, obviously, but at least it's all heading in the same direction. I'm slowly, slowly finding my voice -- literally, even, in the case of the singing lessons.

Part of this discovery process involves learning to be offensive -- whether it's playing a controversial character in an improv scene, or learning to express my opinions or have a stronger personality around people who might not like it. I don't like being offensive, and I ceratinly don't intend to be offensive merely for its own sake, but the self-censorship has taken its toll. I feel a bit like my heart has been in a pressure cooker. The world has seen bits of steam escaping, but no one has seen how much is really compressed in there. I'm not looking for a big explosion (God help us all if that happens), but -- to extend a rather gross cooking metaphor -- I wonder if my heart is close to being, uh, done, and the lid can come off soon.

Is anyone else picturing a cooked heart now? I am. Not sure that's the most helpful image, really. Lord, I'm open to a better one if You've got it.

Interestingly, while I'm slowly finding my voice in my creative pursuits, this week I've managed to physically lose it to a sore throat/cough kind of thing. It went raspy, then it just went. Is it weird that I've always enjoyed this sort of thing? I've always found hiccups fun, too. Not sure if it's the novelty of it, or if I like having a little quirk for a while, or if the actress in me likes having a comedic role to play. Whatever it is, these little ailments never last long enough for me. I'm a little bummed that I don't have more opporunities to talk to people while my voice is gone. A person's voice makes such a difference in whether they're perceived as cute, masculine/feminine, sexy, smart, confident, or annoying, and I'm so curious to know how differently I'd be perceived by someone who had never heard my voice and could now only hear me whisper, and whether hearing my voice later would change that perception. Dang, so curious and no one to experiment on!

I think that pressure cooker/cooked heart image is odd no matter what voice speaks it, though.

In the Spirit of Bringing Things out of the Darkness and into the Light

And driven by a strong impulse toward confession:

1. I saw the Hannah Montana movie this weekend.
2. I was surprised at how much I liked it.
3. I cried a little.

But for the record, this ain't a bad lyric: There's always gonna be another mountain/ I'm always gonna want to make it move...

Shakespeare Can't Be All That Hard, Can It?

Boston has free Shakespeare performances every summer. I've gone for the last few years, and each time I come away wanting to do that. The acting, I mean. Of course, I haven't been in a play since junior high, but that doesn't mean I'm not brilliantly and naturally talented, right?



This week I'm taking in theatrical spectacles two nights in a row. Last night it was The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), an tonight it's A Comedy of Errors. I'm such a sucker for this stuff. I can't claim to have read many of Bill's works, but I usually enjoy seeing a production. And I'm a sucker for that one Hamlet speech they do. Man pleaseth not me either, Hamlet. Though he comes awfully close when he's charming and funny.

Breaking a Mental Sweat

Like a good nerd, I kinda like reading the dictionary (and sometimes the encyclopedia). One nice thing about working at a publisher is that I have one on the shelf of my cubicle, and I pull it out when I'm not sure whether I'm spelling or using a word correctly, or I feel culturally ignorant and want to know who on earth, say, Typhoid Mary was. (Answer: She had "unsanitary habits," and you'd want to take a pass on the spaghetti if she'd been the one hand-rolling the meatballs.)

I'm a little excited because I just learned that I'm not crazy for using politics with singular verbs.

I like the thesaurus, too, though I'm often disappointed that it doesn't contain more. I remember watching the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, in which Matthew McConnaughey and his cohorts are using a thesaurus to come up with the right word for an advertising campaign, and I wanted a job where I could use a thesaurus like that. Still do.

Or maybe a job where I can pretend to be a meathead gym owner who pretends to read the dictionary. Fun either way, I say.

Deep Shallowness

I find myself frustrated on two levels after improv classes and performances. On one level, I'm upset if I don't hear laughs from the audience. On another, I'm upset if I feel I've sacrificed quality scene work just to get cheap laughs. And then I'm extra upset if I make that sacrifice and the laughs still don't materialize!

I want to be a mature and generous performer, creating solid characters and solid scenes, not being a slave to immediate audience response. But I'm realizing that, as with everything else, I can't just choose to be mature. I can make choices that foster maturity, but that's not the same thing. I'm also realizing that denying the desires and instincts that drive me won't help; I'll do better to acknowledge them and try to satisfy them properly, so that I'm not driven by them against my better judgment.

Here's what I mean: I like hearing applause and laughter; I like positive attention; I like approval from authority and being liked by my peers; and I want to feel capable and competent. I can feel all these at work in me when I go to improv classes and rehearsals, and step out on the stage. I can tell myself that the desires for laughter and attention are shallow, but the fact is that they run deep in me. And I'm no longer convinced that they're petty and should be uprooted and replaced by loftier preoccupations like Art or The Good of Mankind. My desires simply are what they are. They're big and unwieldy, but they could also be the magnets that pull me toward the true North of my vocation (which I can easily see serving the purposes of art and God and the good of my fellow man, without leaving me shrivelled and bitter). Often, trying to apply the improv principles that I'm being taught only goes so far in overriding these deep-running desires anyway. Not that my desires and these learned principles are inherently incompatible -- it's just that it can be hard for someone who's inexperienced (as I am with improv) to get them working together rather than against each other.

It's a lot like physical instincts, I think. I saw a documentary that said that our digestive system has so many nerves and wirings that it's almost like a second brain. Denying our stomachs was compared to denying our lungs after walking up a flight of stairs: We might be able to keep our breathing down for a while, but eventually we need the additional air. I also read that we're wired to make up for discipline in one area by cutting ourselves slack in another -- so someone might run three miles and then eat a big muffin. I imagine this crosses disciplines, too -- someone might be great about food and exercise all the time, for example, but hasn't taken the time to think about spiritual matters or isn't good at maintaining relationships.

So I figure the way to handle my nature's desires isn't to try to ignore them or just "discipline" my way through them, because that won't work. And it won't make me happy. Instead, I'd like to have them fulfilled in some healthy fashion, so that I'm free to make mature creative choices. I think that's what "generous" actors must be able to do. They're not so insecure and starved for the limelight that they can't step back and make their fellow performers look good. I was mature enough to do this as a musician, but I'm not there with improv yet.

I don't know what those healthy desire-fillers will be. If my own experience is anything to go by, the whole process will take a while, and I'll just have to be where I am while I'm there. I'll have to keep working to find the balance between applying constructive criticism and enjoying what limited skill I have already.

But I'm kind of excited at the thought of having these desires filled, somehow.

Some Quotes from the Roommies

"Five years ago, she would have been big in Japan."

"That's my latest bad habit: looking at crotches."

"So, there are these two really funny things about Stage 3 hypothermia..."

"Next time I go [to karate], I'm gonna be like, 'Sensei, when do I get to wrestle the ladies?'"

"Having been chased by a bull before, I can't say I'd like to be a cow."