Play Me The Music

We have two vans that take us from city to city. One van is the appropriately-titled passenger van and contains passengers and all the passengers' crap. The second van is the cargo van which contains the entire set and sound system and just has room for the driver and navigator. There is a navigator in each car, a person who sits in the passenger seat up front and is responsible for numerous tasks including communicating with the other van via Walkie Talkie, keeping their eye on the directions and most importantly, taking control of the music.

For the record, I am an excellent navigator due in no small part to the fact that DeMond brought his XM radio.

Guys?

I am in LOVE with XM radio. I love the 1940's station. I love the Broadway station. I love all 40 million country stations though I have not yet subjected anyone in the van to them. I love XM Cafe. I love Channel 23, The Heart, which plays every cheesy love song ever made, including those recorded by Michael Bolton. I love music so much that for me, XM radio is the closest thing to heaven. Yes. That is all I need. Well. Okay. XM radio and possibly a vanilla cupcake with sprinkles.

I do not own XM radio myself because I don't think I would ever leave the house. I would simply sit there and switch channels back and forth and back and forth and revel in ALL THIS AMAZING MUSICAL GLORY WITHOUT COMMERCIALS! In fact, I'm so obsessive and insane that XM bothers me a little and I have to switch stations compulsively because I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M MISSING. By the time James Taylor's "Millworker" is over, Norah Jones is half-way through "Don't Know Why" and the classical station is probably playing something by Rachmaninoff and I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT TO CHOOSE.

But. I manage. With deep breathing exercises and medication.

I've always been quite certain that my musical taste is downright awful and inappropriate for my age. Up until the age of 16 or so, my music collection included Broadway musical soundtracks and cassette tapes of Amy Grant's "Heart in Motion" and Mariah Carey's 1993 smashhit "Musicbox". My musical theatre knowledge was vast and downright frightening, as I could list any show any performer had ever been in. I sang songs from Broadway musicals, playing all the roles, all day long and while I was completely aware that that's why I didn't have friends in junior high, I loved it too much to stop. I knew other music existed--my mom's James Taylor tapes, my father's John Denver records--but I just wasn't interested.

I'm not sure when that changed. All that I know is that it did. The showtune CD's were left to gather dust as I found other music to replace them, music that vibrated and resonated inside me the same exact way they had. Despite the fact that I've branched out considerably since then, I have always been late in my discoveries. I seem to catch onto artists long after the general public has recognized their brilliance. Even in this aspect of my life, I am always behind.

And even as I scramble together playlists of Ben Folds and Beck, Death Cab For Cutie and Nickel Creek, Interpol and the Indigo Girls, I wouldn't say I have great musical taste, just that my taste for music has expanded. I'm still often embarrassed of my undying love for country and folk music, and I'm still completely aware that I know nothing of jazz, I just like things that sound "saxophony" and "pretty".

And yet, when I am navigator and the XM radio remote control is in my hand, I have POWER.

I am forced to make decisions and I do so with aplomb. Snow Patrol! Ella Fitzgerald! James Blunt! Styx! James Taylor over that! Tracks of the new John Mayer album over that! Whitney Houston 80's hits over EVERYTHING! Such confidence this beloved XM radio channel changer has instilled in me! So much in fact that earlier today, Demond told me that I had GREAT.TASTE.IN.MUSIC!

I was still brimming with joy over this comment later in the day while humming to "You Turn Me On (I'm A Radio)" when Melissa, the lead in our show, unabashedly announced to the van that she hated Joni Mitchell.

And since my musical ego was sinfully swollen and I believed in that moment that my musical tastes should be the musical tastes of all people, worldwide, everywhere, now and forever, I promptly threw Melissa from the van and she is now somewhere on a highway in Kentucky.

I do apologize but there's nothing I can do. The XM radio temporarily possessed me.

We are now auditioning for a new star of our show. Time and date are TBA but please prepare a 32-bar selection of your favorite Joni Mitchell song. And now, I'm going to shamelessly listen to the song "N.Y.C." from the hit musical "Annie" because at my core, I still have really bad musical taste.

And She's Baaaaack!

Hello people! I have disappeared off the face of the earth.

I'm sorry. All of my brain cells have been saturated with this show--blocking, scene changes, costume changes, lines, singing, etc. So. Wow. Wait. I'm blogging now. Okay. Allow me to switch gears and catch up a little bit!

Obviously, I've decided to keep blogging! Your comments inspired me and have reassured me that maybe this silly little hobby is not ready to be closed down just yet. And so, I shall press on! (The funniest comment award goes to Beau Regarde, for kidding around that Tom AKA The Palest Boy In The History of Pale might actually be TAN. HAAA. FUNNY.)

As far as the show goes, WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

I'm trying to enjoy some time off after a rather hectic rehearsal period. The show was put on its feet really quickly and for the most part, the rehearsal process was incredibly fulfilling, if a little overwhelming. This show has been done numerous times before so the direction was really more of a recreation. I think it was a really important lesson to learn as an actor, even though I hit a few rough patches. It's hard to step into a role that other people have done before, especially when you haven't seen the production and aren't quite sure where you're meant to take it.

Despite being given very specific notes on how the character was supposed to be, I was still allowed to bring a lot of myself into it, which I was really grateful for. And when I did get frustrated, it wasn't in a dramatic "OHHH YOU ARE IMPEDING MY CREATIVE IMPULSE!" actory bullshit kind of way, but more like a feeling of personal failure, that I couldn't give the director what he wanted because I simply didn't know how he wanted it done. At its core, any feelings of " I CAN'T DO THIS. HELP!" were due to my own insecurity, which was brought to light under the intense scrutiny of a director who didn't let me half-ass my way through the process.

There! I'm so glad you asked for some dramatic actory schpiel on how rehearsals went! TA DA! The End.

In other news, my cast is FABULOUS!!! We seem to be a pretty compatible group, despite some vast differences. I think it'll make for some interesting conversations and hopefully not too many confrontations. We got over all the awkward stuff at the beginning including the fact that for about two days, DeMond thought I was a lesbian. I flirted with the idea of continuing the misconception just for kicks, but quickly opted not to and decided to set the record straight.

STRAIGHT. HAAAAAAAA. GET IT?

We leave bright and early on Tuesday morning, heading down to West Virginia for a night before driving on to Kentucky for our opening show. I have the itinerary for only the first four weeks and being that it's children's theatre, the venues are extremely varied. For example, we are playing at both Myrtle Beach High School and the Grand Ole Opry. WOOO! I'm like Dolly Parton y'all!!!!!

I hope to blog as much as I can while on the road and share some fun stories from the upcoming experience my brother has unofficially dubbed "The Red State Tour '06". Hooray for mullets and George W. Bush! Rah Rah!

In all honesty, I'm battling a lot of anxiety and exhaustion. The rehearsal process was grueling and numerous people were scheduling evenings to hang out with me and after eight hours of rehearsing, the social stuff really zapped me and some nights I just wanted to go home and crash. THIS IS THE CONUNDRUM OF BEING POPULAR AND AMAZING, PEOPLE!!!! Life is hard. So hard.

I was able to go home to see my family yesterday and this provided tons of amusement, especially when my father busted out his forty-year old guitar and began to sing songs. These songs are songs you have never heard of. You probably don't want to hear them. They are songs that deserve to lay in the grave that has been dug for them. They are about the titanic sinking to the bottom of the sea, soldiers dying in battle and someone named Barbara Ellen who has about 15 verses written about her. Now that I'm older, I don't take my father's songs seriously as I once did. It also didn't help that earlier in the day, he pretended to drink coffee out of my mother's new planter.

The best part about hearing country-folk songs from a long forgotten era is when you hear them sung in heavy Brooklyn-accented English. If it can't get more absurd, just add that to the fact that my father's idea of singing is just belting it out loud and clear, occasionally hitting the right note but mostly doing a real smooth slide up the scale until he finds the right pitch. And you know? One could argue that this isn't a half-bad approach, especially when one considers that my father learned to sing/play guitar from a television program taught by Laura Weber.

Who could go wrong with this lady?

You just can't. She looks GENIUS.

Anyway, I really must get ready to spend tomorrow running around like a crazy girl--packing, suspending my gym membership, packing, getting a pedicure, packing and then crying because oh my God I haven't even STARTED PACKING.

Farewell faithful readers and thanks again for the comments! Next time I write to you, it might very well be from a faraway land where people drink beer for breakfast and think Red Lobster is a fancy place to take your wife on her anniversary!

I AM SO EXCITED I CAN BARELY BREATHE!!!!!

I leave you with a family photo that we took while I was at home. I think it's pretty cute, despite the fact that my older brother still looks kind of adopted. Look closely, and you might be able to spot the Persian Jewish sister-in-law, but I'm talking CLOSELY because really, she totally blends in, no?

The End of An Era?

Okay, so this one time I booked a show and started rehearsals and joined Actor's Equity and paid off my credit card debt like Suze Orman said and figured that obviously, all signs were pointing to "BUY A NEW COMPUTER". So I did.

It will arrive next week. It is a laptop. It is a Mac. In short, it's going to be my new boyfriend.

I've been spending the past few hours going through my trusty PC, the PC that was purchased the August before my freshman year of college. It is five years old. There are stickers around the edges of the monitor that say things like "God Always Listens" and "Angel of the Lord" and "Hum a Happy Tune". (I know. What!?!?) This computer contains my entire life--UB papers, critiques, notes and poems for ex-boyfriends, angry IM conversations with friends. In summation: it contains MUCH hilarity.

I was going to post that hilarity here, especially because I found blog entries from 1998-2003 on my hard drive. I was going to cut and paste HYSTERICAL melodramatic quotes from those entries but really, all you need to know is that I've been a total spaz my entire life and had NO sense of tact and NO sense of what should/should not be posted on the world wide web. Therefore, most entries are one huge paragraph long, start out with a quote from a Broadway musical and ramble on like this:

"TODAY TOM AND I WENT TO THE CITY AND SAW A SHOW AND OHMYGOD I HAVE TO WRITE OUT MY 'TONY AWARD' PICKS BECAUSE OHMYGOD THE TONY'S ARE THE BEST THING OF MY LIFE BY THE WAY I LOVE JESUS! GOD WILL GET ME THROUGH THIS! OHMYGOD I SAW 'RENT' 4 TIMES BECAUSE I AM A 16 YEAR OLD LOSER!!!!!!!!"

The End.

And then I started thinking. And I've been thinking in between rehearsing. (Which, by the way, is going so well! Random Fact: Ashlee Simpson is rehearsing in the room next door for a West End production of "Chicago" BUT even better, this morning I ran into Christine Ebersole in the lobby who is rehearsing for "Grey Gardens" and oh WAIT, I'm still blogging about Broadway show stars because I AM A 23 YEAR OLD LOSER.)

So, I've been thinking.

I've been thinking about how I began this blog in 1998. This whole blog experience has been such a therapeutic outlet for me. Reading back on those high school entries, I laughed so hard at the younger version of myself. I also realized that my writing has really grown and matured since then. (Thank God.) I don't think I'm a wonderful writer, I just think this has helped me to become a better one. This precious space has forced me to write by encouraging a natural flow of ideas, thoughts and commentary. It has blossomed from a mortifying "Dear Diary, Here's What I Did Today!" format to a collection of short stories about my family, living in New York City and the struggles of an actor.

An anonymous girl once told me she reads this as fiction and I felt so honored by that compliment. But hey, the thing with blogs and livejournals and such are that entries are often written in the heat of the moment. I have written some truly terrible things. I've been narcissistic, sarcastic, catty, melodramatic, etc. And no one probably noticed, but this summer, I deleted over 1/2 my archived entries from the past two years. This was mostly because I went back to read them and I cringed. A lot.

Because my blog entries are permanently preserved in cyberspace, anyone can stumble upon this, read through the archives and make a harsh judgment about me. It doesn't matter if at that moment, I was angry or dramatic or jealous or immature. The entry stands alone and can be taken out of context and applied to the present day Me. Do I want people to be able to do that? Will my future husband google me after our first date? Will he read through all my entries? What kind of picture will that paint of me? A real one, at least. But, ick.

I also have to wonder, if I want to be a successful actress (and by successful I mean working, not famous), do I really want my personal life published on the internet? I think I've been really good about avoiding certain subjects. (Specific job details, relationship details of any kind, friendships gone awry, etc.) I wasn't always so careful but I learned. Some things just need to be banned from discussion on this website, because now, at 23, I have tact (somewhat) and a sense of what you can/cannot write about on the world wide web for all to read.

It is so hard for me to imagine shutting this down. I wanted to keep this up and start journaling about my experience working on this upcoming tour. I even contemplated spinning a blog off this one just for that sole purpose. I thought it would be pretty entertaining to read, a literary version of a reality television show if you will--7 people driving around the South in a van. Priceless.

And oh Lord everyone, it's so amazing for me to go back and read those entries, even the horribly embarrassing 2001 entries. There are details in there that I'd totally forgotten about, memories that had left me a long time ago. I read them and I just thought, "Wow, I am SO glad I have this to look back on." It's like finding all those notes from 6th grade in a shoebox on top of your closet. You totally forgot you used to doodle yin-yangs on notes, right?! HILARIOUS!

And the end of blogging doesn't have to mean the end of my writing and my ability to keep track of the minute details of my life. I guess I could keep up the everyday writing in my private written journal but I usually just reserve that old-fashioned thing for "I HAVE A CRUSH ON..." lists and recipes for Martha Stewart cookies so that just wrecks my whole flow. Or, I could type on the computer as if blogging and just never click "Publish".

Nothing happened. I didn't get in trouble for this blog, nobody found it that wasn't supposed to. I just don't know. I don't know if there's a point to this anymore. If I'm too personal, not personal enough, or just reinforcing my TOTAL LOSER motife that I'm trying so hard to discard, etc. (As an actress, how do I create a marketable image of myself if I post pictures of me with tomatoes over my eyes?)

I guess what I'm asking you all is,

www.thespectrum.org: So good? Or no good?

Corporate Excellence

I just want to give a shout out to the Human Resources department in this company that I'm leaving in a FEW SHORT HOURS!!! Despite the fact that today is my last day, HR decided that YESTERDAY was my last day so when I came in this morning, I found all my files, e-mails and unfinished projects deleted!

Dear HR,

I hate your lives!

Love, Laura!

Not to mention, I was denied access to the building as my ID badge had expired, YESTERDAY and it's SO annoying to sign in through security. This being said, I decided to take Michelle's ID badge when it came time to leave the building briefly for my daily Oatmeal Run. Lucky for me, there was a new security guard at the desk and when I buzzed myself in with Michelle's ID, her picture came up on the computer he was staring at.

I have to say, he definitely is a smart guy because he totally noticed I don't have Michelle's dark black curly hair. This raised an alarm in his mind and he yelled out at me that it's ILLEGAL to use someone else's badge. THEN he screamed that he was going to have my ID CONFISCATED because you JUST CAN'T USE SOMEONE ELSE'S ID, YOU JUST CAN'T!

Dear Observant Security Guard,

I was just borrowing an ID badge. I'm not the Unabomber.

Your Sister in Christ,
~Laura

He wasn't buying the dumb blonde act at first but then I showed him my own defunct ID and apologized profusely and finally he acquiesed and let me through. I'm not going to lie that I almost cried in the elevator because I was so mortified. I say "almost" because I realized that I was holding my oatmeal with strawberries and walnuts at the time and how can you cry when you're holding something like that?!

Today, after nine weeks sitting at this desk, I will walk out and never come back. I don't have to deal with rude ladies from England who call to yell at me, spreadsheets that need correcting at precisely 4:59 pm and co-workers who slap high-fives. And all I have to ask is,

HOW DO YOU GUYS DO THIS?!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, how?

I was not meant to sit in my cubicle and stare at the screen. All I can think about is the fact that I want to be outside or in a library or singing a song or writing a novel. I don't want to deal with reserving a conference room or who needs a car to take them to the airport. And yet, I definitely found some things to get me through, if you're interested:

1. Eat oatmeal with strawberries and walnuts for breakfast every day. (When it's a really bad day, a little brown sugar helps.)
2. Find a co-worker who is just as bored as you. Sabotage them with Instant Messages about life, love, relationships and ebonics. This is a great way to pass a 1/2 hour, easy.
3. Go to the gym during your lunch hour to sweat and stretch out the banality of it all.

But you know? These are just coping mechanisms. Even when I did all three, I still felt jittery and caged in. I just don't feel like I was made to sit still in such a tiny space. But then again, who is?

During one of many passionate clashes of ideals, Keith once said to me that I worked to fulfill, while he worked to provide. That meant so much to me because I had never before grasped the idea that the majority of the American public works solely for the paycheck. People work to own a home, support their families, go on vacations and pay the bills. And it's not that there isn't anything important or notable about that. There is.

And I understand that it's work. That's what it's supposed to be. It's a job. And for the past year and a half since I graduated, I've done the same thing. I've been temping, nannying, marketing, catering, anything just to pay my bills. And I never hated any of it really. (Except catering. Wow, I HATE catering.) But I could do office work. Sure. I could do this every day if I needed to and I have for moments at a time. If anything, it creates a routine for me which helps me feel grounded and useful. But...I don't know.

I guess I'm working through some anxiety about the start of rehearsals on Tuesday. Rehearsals will be 10-6, so yes I will be inside most of the day but instead of a cubicle, I will be in a studio. Instead of typing and answering the phone, I will be learning lines, staging and choreography. I will be warming up my voice in the morning, stretching at night and trying on wigs in between. And I think the thing that astounds me about this is that for the first time since I moved to New York City, I am going to get paid to do this.

Someone is going to directly deposit actual MONEY in my bank account so that I can sing and dance for children. I am going to earn my living by waking up in a new city every morning and getting up on a stage. I'm having a hard time believing that for 12 consecutive weeks, I am going to get paid to do something I would do every day, 100%, all the time for free.

At least for 3 whole months, I don't have to sit at a desk. I don't have to stay inside all day and bemoan my missed mornings. And it's not all going to be easy...not with the traveling and putting up sets and keeping up my energy. But no matter what, it's not going to be what I'm doing right this very minute.

And I'm starting to get this feeling...

That I'm very, very lucky.

Dear God, The Casting Director of My Show, and Actor's Equity:

Thanks. I really needed this right now.

TTYL,
--Laura.