just breathe

This year has been such an emotional rollercoaster so far that almost feel numb now. But I'm on top of the school work and despite having the script to worry about/work on, the issue with my stolen goods, a lot more homework, upcoming auditions for the location shoots on thursday as well as the monologue competition on friday, I still feel like I'm keeping on top of things, I don't feel like I'm drowning at all, yet, which is good I suppose. In fact I was walking home after the monologue competition coaching with Jim Bates last night at around half past nine, and I could physically sense all these things that are looming over me, threaten to cave in, but I just focused on my breathing and it kept them at bay, and then I noticed how beautiful the clouds were against the night sky.

We just had singing class and sang one of the group songs for the first time, and although I thought the song seemed extremely boring when I read through it, it was actually quite fun. It's called "An Old-fashioned Wedding" and in the third chorus the guys and the girls sing their respective choruses at the same time, completely overlapping each other, and it was really cool. Even though there were only the three of us (Gillian was none present today for some reason) and way too many of them. I still think we managed to get our point across. My favourite line: "Love and honor, yes, but not obey..."

I also had some revelation in singing class today, well I had two, and that was that my body instinctively shuts down when I partner with just one person whereas I feel completely free and in my body when I'm engaging with the entire group now, and today I tapped into that and discovered that I was afraid. And it struck me that I feel that I have to give that person my all, more than I have to give, and I, not only lose myself completely, but I also feel extremely pressured. And then I realized that I'm like that in my private life too, and that's why my social life is quite fucked, and why I feel like I don't have any friends but lots of people have me as their friend, that's why. And I told Alisa, not about my social life, but about the singing, and she gave me some good support and advice and basically told me that no-one else is my responsibility, I can only be responsible for myself, and that makes complete sense, and I know that, but at this point I'm obviously acting on instince, not intellectually. But now that I am aware of this, I can work with it. Not against it, but with it.

The other things is that the connection between the resonators in your body and the support in your lowest resonator (your gut) all made sense to me. My voice teacher in theatre school nor Mikal Grant managed to get that through my thick head, apparantly, because when Alisa explained it to me today the pieces all just fell into place...