A little idle talk of this and that

I HAVE EMERGED FROM THE DARKNESS.

And by the darkness, I mean the South. Or, I guess, the slightly deeper South.

My wisdom teeth healing has not been going remarkably well. From what I gather. I've never had wisdom teeth removed before, or really any major dental surgery, so I have very little to compare it with, but from the stories I've heard from others, my healing time has been on the worse side of average, especially with the major relapses in pain that happened on the 4th and 6th nights. Sunday was the first morning I woke up in anything less than agony. However, I feel I've probably been more functional than the average wisdom tooth recoveree because I have an incredibly high tolerance for physical pain. Thus I've been visiting people and traveling throughout North and South Carolina, though never driving myself, and sleeping a lot, and eating a lot of pudding. The swelling has gone down a lot, though I am left with HIDEOUS yellow bruises. One on each cheek, though the right cheek is significantly worse. Like... really, really, awful. The kind of yellowish green that theatrical lighting should never, ever be. I actually look diseased. I also left all my makeup in New York.

I also have been talking with a lisp.

My parents say they don't notice it. It's slight and it goes in and out, but it MADDENS ME. It's because of the cheeks swelling, I know, but still. My tolerance for pain is about as high as my tolerance for hearing myself speak without perfect diction is low.

I went down to Montreat for a day, to visit with my fellow Summer Staffers for a night. I'd never been to Montreat in the winter before. It was covered in snow and absolutely beautiful in a different way. Most of summer staff was at Montreat this weekend for College Conference. I read all of their Twitters about it, and missed being there. But I'm hugely grateful for the opportunity I had to stop by and visit, hit the old summer hangouts again. Even though I went to bed from a medicine-induced stupor far before anyone else considered laying down, it was still a great time. Russ tucked me in. Then it was down to Charleston to visit family, the semi-annual visit, which included good southern food. (Just as I don't trust pastrami on rye in the South, I don't trust chicken and dumplin's in the North. Or anywhere they think it's "dumplinGs". WRONG.)

Meanwhile, the year changed. I was asleep when the New Year struck, as that was the night a LOT of pain came back. I have heard people talk about the new year, the new decade, New Year's Resolutions, the year feeling different, and I... don't feel it. Perhaps it's because I'm more connected to the school calendar and the Christian calendar than the normal calendar, but something especially about New Year's Resolutions doesn't seem to make sense to me. When life is about constantly moving forward, constantly "striving for perfection" (if I'm going to be all Wesleyan here), an ever-forward-moving pattern of trying, falling short, confessing, trying again, confining resolutions to times like New Year's seems highly inadequate. I made resolutions every day last semester. Some of them stuck. The others I will keep working on and keep resolving. Resolving to change one's life is not a "I make a resolution and then hope I keep it." That's not actually being active - that's having one moment of being active and then falling into passivity. It has to be a constant choice (because what is a resolution but a particularly strong choice?). For most New Year's Resolutions, it's not, which is why they famously fall by the wayside. I get doing creative projects that last the year. That makes sense to me. Resolutions? Nope.

Turned in my play proposals for next semester. I shouldn't be too surprised that I have odd tastes in plays. My top two plays I'm proposing are from a time and style of plays that are just.. never done anymore. They're from the early part of the 1900's (the first play is from 1911), and there's this slew of English and Irish One-Acts from the time that are absolutely delightful, humorous, adorable, and no one does them. Ever. I started checking out this time period after browsing old play anthologies and finding Lord Dunsany's name. (Lord Dunsany being one of the early fantasy authors... and my second choice is a Lord Dunsany play. It's about a hat. Well, it's not REALLY about a hat, but it kind of is. It's about romance vs. a hat, the hat of course representing class and society.) Anyway, I find these plays delightful, and they're never done. Ever. Really, ever. The only person I've talked to who's known my first choice play well is Becker, that teacher of mine from high school, who knows it and loves it and wanted to adapt it into a musical for the longest time, and even wrote some songs for it. Meanwhile, I want to do it with a five-person vocal ensemble. But, of course, Becker and I are not-so-secretly the same person, so none of this should be a surprise. But besides apparently Becker and I.. no one knows these, no one does these, ever, and there's a wealth of them. The language is strange (part of my attraction to them - they're the bridge between classical and contemporary language, incredibly poetic), but I think they're too optimistic for today's theater artists. Particularly in downtown New York theater, where most people are still regurgitating postmodernism. (STOP IT ALREADY.)

So, let's start a revival of these lost gems! They're beautiful, they're refreshing, and they're free! (Public domain is the best.) Who's with me?!

(I always felt left out when people my age would say, "I should have lived in the 50's/60's/20's" or whatever. I never felt that pull towards another time period like that... until last year when I realized my time period was much earlier. I should have been born in, like... 1875. Things that span from 1880 through 1912, I eat right up.)

Speaking of next semester, I got some exciting emails today. The one show I'm definitely already working on, that has been approved and has dates that it's happening, is a new musical written by one of my classmates that's being produced at NYU (though not through PHTS, which is why it's already official). I'm dramaturging. (What's a dramaturg, Colleen?) A dramaturg's responsibilities shift production-to-production, but generally speaking, the dramaturg pretty much always helps with the research and development of the production. It's difficult to really explain, so I'll give an example. Last year, I dramaturged an original work based on the story of Salome. The creator/director of that piece is a strong dramaturg herself, and had already done a LOT of research on the myth that has sprung up around Salome (because she's only in the Bible for like... two seconds). However, she didn't know much about John the Baptist, who was the other major character in the piece. So I went and did a ton of research about John, about baptism, about anchorites, etc., to present to her (and the actor playing John, eventually). The key about presenting research is presenting the information that's important to the production in ways that it's important to the production. I read an entire book once, and told her one sentence from that that could help the piece. It was interesting, but not on track with the story we were telling. The other part of my job was, since this was an original piece, go through the piece with her to help her figure out what was happening when she was too close to it to see clearly, and help her towards finding the ending, which was her particular challenge. (I think dramaturgs secretly always need to have an eye on structure.) Some teachers at PHTS call the dramaturg "the director's smart best friend".

So. I'm dramaturging this new musical, and today, the production team got a copy of the full, completed rough draft we're going to start working with, and demo recordings of all of the songs. Upon seeing this I became ecstatic. I've found demo recordings of musicals that are now established pieces of musical theater canon, of my favorite pieces. There's a backer's audition tape of an early version of Sweeney Todd floating around if you know where to look. I've listened to these examining how they changed, as an excited, interested fan... but to be a part of the first group to hear a full demo - the group that, in fact, the demo was recorded FOR... it's an astounding feeling.

I finished reading The Dark Night of the Soul. Most of it was far beyond my spiritual level of comprehension, but I still got a lot from it. I will get more the second time. And more the third time. I am very, very upset that the Saint didn't expand upon the last five stanzas of the poem... particularly stanzas 8 and 9, which are full of such lush, sensual imagery. Since the Saint generally talks about the senses in a negative way, as something lower and not of the spiritual realm, and how one of the reasons for the dark night is to release the spirit from the hold of the senses, I'm HUGELY curious at the sensuality of those verses. Though in Chapter IV, he writes, "Now when this sensual part is renewed by the purgation of the dark night which we shall describe, it no longer has these weaknesses; for it is no longer this part that receives aught, but rather it is itself received into the Spirit." I think there are two primary ways of reading this--one is that we are changed to be communicated with not through the senses, but directly through the spirit... OR that the sensual part is purified and therefore able to be connected to the spirit. I'm inclined to the latter interpretation, which seems to speak of sensual transformation that would make the last verses of the poem make more sense, and also help me understand the sensuality in the Song of Songs. (The Dark Night of the Soul helped a bit with that one already.) Perhaps reading some other works by Saint John of the Cross would help on that end. Still though. "With his gentle hand he wounded my neck, and caused all my senses to be suspended." INCREDIBLE. I'm more curious about that than about the 15 different uses of disguises, secrecy, and concealment in the first five stanzas.

I am now reading CS Lewis' The Problem of Pain, which is phenomenal. He makes so much sense. (Unlike the mystics. It's nice to alternate.) He takes logic to theology with a candor I appreciate, and in a way that is sometimes inspiring, sometimes humorous, and always easy to follow. I was going to post some of his thoughts on love, but they got me thinking so much that that will have to be its own post.

For now, it is bed time. I should get up early to call the oral surgeon. There's one more bit of pain/concern that I want to bring to the professionals before my post-op appointment on Thursday. Thank you all for your prayers in all of this. I'm grateful for them and you.