Peace

I've recently read a wonderful book. It's quite a well-known book, hugely popular and then made into a movie with a few celebrities. It's about love, spirituality, pleasure, and peace. Guessed it yet? It's 'Eat, Pray, Love'.

It's one of those books that I kept saying, 'Oh you should read that.' about but never actually got round to it, until I saw it sitting next to my Mum's bed and realised we owned a copy. So I read it, and I'm glad I did. I understand why it is so popular. Why so many people love it and endorse it. It's a beautiful book. It's the kind of book that inspires you, not in a cliched sense, but in the same way that seeing someone perform makes me want to get up and perform also. It makes you want to be active in life.

For some people, I can imagine it would be a hard read. The book (for those of you who haven't read it) is divided into three sections: Italy for pleasure, India for spirituality, and Indonesia for balancing the two. The first section, Italy, is probably enjoyable for everyone. It's about things everyone can relate to - the art of relaxing. Enjoying yourself without guilt, letting yourself eat pasta and ice cream for breakfast and spending days wandering the street with no real aim.

The second section is when it changes. India is all about spirituality. It's all about meditation, grappling with inner demons, finding god, finding peace.

I am not a religious person, but for some reason I love reading about it. I love reading from the perspective of a religious person. I love finding out about it, understanding it, knowing about it. And so this portion of the book fascinated me. BUT. It did bring up a question in my mind.

First of all, the majority of the book talks about finding this enlightenment, oneness with god and the universe that gives you contentment. It lets you let go of negative emotions or needless feelings and live with happiness. That's great. That's terrific. But it made me think - is that right? Is living in contentment how we are meant to be living?

It brings me back to a post I made a while ago about feeling miserable and angry and just letting yourself feel that for a while. Everyone is entitled to a bit of angst. In my mind, someone who is happy all the time isn't a very interesting person. Nor are they very human. They say only the insane are happy all the time. Do they say that simply because they can't understand the concept of being happy? That we can't? Maybe. Maybe I'm wrong, and if I understood it more I would be more accepting of it.

But another thing. I find that negative emotions are incredibly necessary. Not all the time obviously - I'm not saying that someone in a constant bad mood is the best person in the world. What I'm saying is that it's the negative emotions that drive us into great things sometimes.

It's that feeling of frustration and anger when we can't understand something that pushes us to practice and learn and not give up until we learn it. It's those feelings of grief and sadness that prompt us to take stock of the world and our lives and make changes for the better. It's that feeling of unsatisfaction with what we have that makes us advance our knowledge and create more and more amazing things. Yes, there are elements of positive emotions in these examples, but that's the balance, isn't it? How can there be positive without negative?

The idea of being happy and content all the time is an alluring one. A magical one even. It paints a picture of heaven, of total enlightenment and peace. But, in my mind, it is in no way a realistic one. That's not what humans are about. We shouldn't live our lives trying to suppress and fight away negative emotions. Those emotions are just as a part of us as happiness and excitement are. We need that duality. Yes, we can strive to find a balance, but reaching for a state of only happiness is an empty dream.

I hope you don't take this as morbid, it's not in any shape or form. I just like that humans are complex, and that we can feel grief and joy to the exact same depth. I don't want to have to pretend that we shouldn't.

Rant ended.

Incredible

Anyone else find this absolutely incredible?! Some people are so talented.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/23arAI/www.behance.net/gallery/Solitude-20102011-A-work-in-progress/954142

Story

Hi all! Here's a short story I wrote a while ago called 'Heaven'.

***

“What a wicked face that fellow has!” the judge murmured down to me meekly.

What a wicked face indeed! I couldn’t help but agree. From my little stool by the judges table I could see the man’s features quite clearly; wide, slightly grinning mouth, bright flickering eyes. The bluish shadow that marked his fatal blow was only just creeping out from under he’s carefully sculpted hairdo. He had draped himself casually over his chair, inviting the gaze of the jury members with a clear and disconcerting relish. All in all, the effect was one of utter arrogance with just a sharp hint of humour glinting in the darkest part of his eyes. He shifted his gaze to me, gave a lazy smile and rolled his eyes as if to say, “What a waste of time, eh, buddy?” I returned the gaze and blinked a few times as if to say, “Kindly stop looking at me.”

It was a true mark of his puffed up pride that he did not look away at once. After all, I was an Angel, albeit a rather unimportant one. But as far as the hierarchy of Heavenly Judicial Rankings (HJR) goes, I was certainly several happy steps above him on the ladder. What’s more, I had my newly printed license for the Gaze of Retribution sitting snugly in my pocket and in my cheerful pride of this achievement I was all too keen to test it out a little. Unfortunately the man’s rather pitiable defence attorney, who had had his morning coffee that day, was paying attention and gave him a sharp rap on the shoulder.

“Oh, come on!” the man groaned in the long suffering tones of a rebellious teenager, or a very immature fully grown man. “Why is nothing happening?”

The judge, who seemed to have taken personal offence to the complaint cleared his throat meaningfully – or at least as meaningfully as a series of indignant gargling and choking noises can be.

“We shall begin court proceedings.” He nodded to me. “Sir Angel Harvey of the second ranking, if you could please read the list of grievances.”

I pulled out the sheet I had written earlier and put on my best possible law-court voice. “List of complaints towards one Barnaby, of negative seventh ranking,” I squeaked judicially. “Disrespect towards Angels, disrespect towards The Big Guy, disrespect towards the carefully ordered system of the afterlife, 3 counts of missing compulsory afterlife apology workshops, 2 counts of still-living-spousal neglect, and 34 counts of inappropriate nudity.”

A large dramatic sigh was followed by my well-spoken announcement and Barnaby rolled his eyes in an exaggerated fashion to the point of a damaging neck strain.

“Representative of the defence,” the judge intoned in what he had hoped to be a powerful authoritative voice but which sounded rather like he was suppressing a large belch, “Do you have anything to say?”

The defence attorney made a large thing of shuffling around some papers, which were very obviously blank. He then opened and shut a briefcase a few times, pulled his glasses to the end of his noise, peered out over the courtroom and said in a clear and succinct voice, “No.”

Barnaby threw up his hands in exasperation. The judge ignored him and proceeded to say, “Barnaby, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Given the opportunity to perform, Barnaby stood up grandly, extending his arms and prancing to the jury’s table before strutting back and forth.

“Once you have finished your talented rendition of A Chorus Line,” the judge tittered with a little flush of pride at his terrific humour. He had, in fact, just finished a season of A Chorus Line as the role of ‘talent-lacking dancer #4’ and had been hoping to slip a comedic musical reference in court soon so as to make people take notice of his vast theatrical knowledge.

Barnaby also flushed, but with anger that his dramatic start had not quite come off with the finesse he had hoped for. He turned murderously to the giggling jury and began speaking in a low ominous undertone.

“Well, your honour, if that really is your name, I have several things to say –“

“Speak up, you idiot!” a jury member exclaimed, throwing a small paperweight in his direction.

“Fine! Since none of you understand theatrical subtlety –“

“I wouldn’t say that!” the judge huffed angrily.

“- I shall speak plainly!” Barnaby cleared his throat.

“Get on with it!” another anonymous jury member yelled.

“My response to these crimes, my impatient friends,” Barnaby continued, ignoring several angry murmurings from the jury for being wrongly labelled as his ‘friends’, “is thus. First of all, I only disrespect Angels because they could not look more ridiculous if they tried.”

I tucked my fluffy angel wings as far behind me as possible and tried not to look too embarrassed.

“Secondly, The Big Guy completely understood that my comments to him were a joke, and we had a good laugh about it. He said he found it refreshing that I felt comfortable enough to call him what I called him as no one had ever done it before.”

I nodded, hating myself for accepting his explanation. It was a well-known fact that The Big Guy had a rather strong sense of humour. He had, much to my terror, given me a lift home from my religion-appreciation class one day and as intimidated as I was, his jokes about global warming had kept me chuckling for days. Any man high up enough in the HJR to be called Almighty but still insisted on being called The Big Guy is generally able to tell a joke from a fist in the face.

“And what did you call The Big Guy?” the judge asked in the voice of someone who is about to tell a very bad joke that they think is hilarious.

Barnaby sighed. “Butthead, your honour.”

The judge shook with suppressed giggles. “And how long have you been in the third grade?” He then burst into unrestrained laughter which the court imitated out of manners and pity more then anything else.

“As I was saying,” Barnaby said testily, “HE got it, if none of you thick-headed idiots did not. Thirdly, I have nothing to say to that claim as the actions speak for themselves. Fourthly and fifthly combined, there are clearly far too many ridiculous rules and classes to climb the so called heavenly hierarchy then altogether necessary, which brings me to sixthly – I expected to be able to do what I want here but cruelly I cannot, so I ask you, what is the point of being dead if it is just like being alive?”

At this arrogant outburst the judge positively shone with red-faced flustered indignation.

“The point, Barnaby!” he sputtered. “The point is – the point, I say, is…”

He lost himself for a moment in the furious and bewildered silence of a man who is forced to think about things he generally strives to ignore.

“The point is that you have done bad things and you shall be rightly punished!” He finished after a long pause, rather anti-climactically.

“I thought that was the reason I was here in the first place,” Barnaby stated with a theatrical flair.

“You are sentenced to…” As much as the judge had no patience for Barnaby’s dramatic tendencies, he had no problem with his own and so the suspense-inducing pause that he put in his sentence dragged on for a full three minutes before I delicately drew the matter to his attention.

“Judge!” I shrieked subtly.

“Harvey, I was pausing dramatically and you just ruined all the anticipation.” I had the good sense to blush and look timidly at my feet. “Anyway, as I was saying, you are sentenced to be born.”

The jury gasped obediently, reading the ‘GASP’ sign that was now flashing luridly above the judge’s table.

“Oh me, oh my,” Barnaby yawned. “Should I be terrified?”

The judge blinked a few times before saying, “Well, yes, if you don’t mind.”

“Well I do mind!” Barnaby exclaimed hotly, ignoring his defence attorney who was now flapping a hand in front of his face. “I think it’s time someone sensible, intelligent, good-looking and generally extremely funny should tell you the problems with this system you’ve got going. The after-life should be a place that is different to life, otherwise it’s just like living still, but after!”

“Um, it is called the after-life,” I interjected as timidly as I could manage while still sounding very intellectual. “It’s quite logical for us to have this system.”

“Oh, yes, of course, I’m sorry – I do believe you have convinced me with your mental fortitude,” Barnaby said with the discernible sarcasm of a brick. As a result, the jury and judge all smiled in surprise satisfaction that my intelligent words had gotten through to him.

“Well, since you’ve seen the error of your ways –“

“No you fools!” Barnaby cut of the judge with an extravagant gesture that upended the table and sent papers wafting about everywhere. “I was being sarcastic. I actually think that this system is idiotic because human beings aren’t logical. We are emotional! The after-life shouldn’t have a hierarchy; it should have no system at all! It should be different for each person –“

“ENOUGH!” thundered the judge in an excellent display of his voice projection training. “Off you go right this second. You shall be born this evening and I’ll hear not another word from you. Now, begone!”

Barnaby gathered himself together into a perfect picture of composure as he gathered up the blank papers on the floor that his defence attorney had brought to look more professional. To this attorney, Barnaby said, “I expect you have assumed already that I shan’t be paying you didly-squat.”

And with that, Barnaby left the room, accompanied by four armed Angel guards.

“Well!” sighed the judge. “Glad that’s over. The rebels of one life always end up being the radical thinkers in the afterlife, don’t they? Anyway, The Big Guy’s hosting drinks tonight, who’s coming?”

Hooray for Musical Theatre !!

Now I know I tried (and failed) to do a 30 day song challenge in the past, but this is much more suited to me! It's a 30 day musical theatre song challenge, and I'm going to modify it slightly. I'm just answering a whole bunch of the questions now, then some more later, then some more after that instead of boring you all for 30 days straight. Onto question number one!

1. A song from the first musical you ever saw/heard.

Well. I think the first musical I actually ever saw was Cats, but it doesn't count because I don't remember anything other then that I was teriffied and we left half way through. So instead I shall say "Jeanette's Showbiz Number" from The Full Monty. Dad was in this musical when I was about 11. Because of that, we saw it over and over again, and I listened to the soundtrack over and over again. We got to sit in rehearsals, and go to cast parties and I was completely enthralled by the world of musical theatre. This son was my absolute fave from the show because it was so broadway, and I sung it to death.

2. A song from your latest musical obsession.

I'm loving this question because I go through so many random obesessions with musicals. At the moment I've been very very obsessed with Sondheim, and I recently got the Company album. The song that I've been singing from it is "The Little Thing's You Do Together". I adore Sondheim's music, and Company is such a great example of his work. His chatty, fast paced, heavy-lyric-ed songs and his heartfelt, beautiful ballads are all on show, plus it has such a touching message about relationships and connection.

3. A song demonstrating how underrated I think a musical is.

This is a tough question. I suppose my best answer is "Rita's Confession" from Lucky Stiff. I never really hear people talking about Lucky Stiff, or singing any of the songs. But I really like it, and this song is fantastic. It's quite hilarious and I oversung it for a long period of time.

4. A song demonstrating how overrated I think a musical is.

My answer to this is a complicated one. The musical Wild Party is a favourite of many, heaps of people LOVE the music, and I admit, a few songs I enjoy and sing along to. But the rest of it, I find absolutely awful. I think this show is far too overrated for it's own good.

5. A song which makes you happy.

Everytime I listen to "Totally F****ed" from Spring Awakening I feel so happy - and I know it's strange because it's not necessarily a happy happy song. But whenever it reaches the 'blah-blah0blah' group sung section, I feel so happy and joyous because the it's such a passionate, heartfelt part of the song. Love it.

6. A song which makes you sad/teary.

I just discovered this one recently. It's called "Soon They'll Forget" from a musical called Once We Lived Here by Matthew Frank and Dean Bryant. Mr. Frank himself gave it to my showfit class to learn and perform to him in an audition excercise and I was an absolute mess. The song was so beautiful, and so tragic that it was making me tear up just trying to learn it!

7. A song sung by your favourite female singer in a musical.

My absolute favourite female singer of all time is Julie Andrews. She's basically my idol, so I'm going to say the song "Stay Awake" from Mary Poppins. Yes I know it's a movie musical but it still counts! She sings it so beautifully.

8. A song sung by your favourite male singer in a musical.

I have so many favourite female singers but not many male ones, strangely enough. One I do love, though, is Norbert Leo Butz. He's a fantastic performer and singer. So I'll say "Schmuel's Song" from The Last Five Years. It is such a brilliant song, and so brilliantly performed.

9. A song from a musical you know all (or nearly all) of the lines to.

Hands down, any song from Jesus Christ Superstar. I am a big fan of knowing the lyrics to everything, and JCS is my all time favourite musical that I listened to NON-STOP! I can basically sing the whole recording all the way through.

10. A song from your least favourite musicl.

A musical I really dislike is Xanna Don't. Potentially, I haven't given it a big enough chance, but listening to it once through was enough for me. However there is one song I like from it called "Fast" basically because I have an obsession with singing very wordy songs very quickly, and that's basically what this whole song is about.


That's enough for today! I'll post the next ten questions soon enough :)

Expectations

Expect a lot from yourself and you'll exceed everyone's expectations but your own.

This was a thought I had on the train on the way home from Showfit today. Personally, I am a big believer in expecting a lot from yourself. In many ways, I don't see the point in setting limits. I strive to achieve as much as I possibly can right now. I want to exceed expectations, and so for myself and in my mind, normal becomes not good enough.

But. This being said. Yes I find high expectations for ourselves to be a mainly positive thing, but lately I have come to understand how negative it can be as well. You can be very hard on yourself if you don't achieve what you've set out to achieve, and as a person with little patience for myself, I get very frustrated in this sense. If I don't get from A - Z quickly enough, I get angry at myself for not being good enough/strong enough/smart enough to be at Z already.

So when are high expectations a good thing and when are they damaging? Should we be easier on ourselves and as a result have to deal with less self-disapointment? Or should we push ourselves to be the very best we can be at all times? I know that people can be really damaged by other people's expectations, but self-expectations are more dangerous I believe. Much more. So what is it? A bit of both maybe... I don't have an answer because I am, at the moment, swinging back and forth between the extremes. I have moments of complete and utter "I can do this. I WILL do this. I am doing this!" mentality and then I get unbelievably frustrated because I can't do this or that and I think I SHOULD be able to do this and that by now. I should be improving. I should be stronger. What am I doing wrong if I'm not?

It's a riddle. At least it is to me. I know no-one can be perfect, and it's pointless to expect that because it's impossible. But I don't quite accept that on some deep, subconscious level. Or something like that. Bleh. Too much to think about! Too much to try to unravel. Maybe you'll have better luck?

Magic

When I was young, I was obsessed with magic, completely and utterly. I read Harry Potter and believed every word of it (yes, I waited for my acceptance letter to Hogwarts), I watched movies like Matilda and absorbed the whole idea of special powers, and I made fairy houses in my backyard. I believed that dust was made from fairies who had died because people didn't believe in them, and I dreamt of finding magic wands.

Magic was a huge and very real thing to me. I never wanted to give up any belief in magic, and I still don't want to give it up despite being nearly out of my teenage years (gosh!). And while I don't wait for fairies to come to my door anymore, or expect, one day, to close the door with my mind, I realise I haven't actually given up magic, and that's because of two things: 1. My writing. and 2. Theatre.

When it comes to my writing, I can create everything and anything I've ever believed in. I can have a world that lives and breathes magic and in a way I can live through that. And the power of that magic is that maybe one day, other children will learn to believe in magic through that. The ability to create something completely new and completely from your own imagination is magic in itself. It's a thrilling experience and it's one that I feel lucky to be able to live.

But this week my focus has really been on theatre. And boy what a week it's been! Not only did we (meaning Schming and I) get a chance to work on our show with some incredibly talented people, but we were given the opportunity to show it and get some truly constructive feedback. We learnt so much about the show, about where it can go and what it needs. But I also learnt a lot about the magic of theatre, especially in musicals. The fact that our most well received moments are the one's that are less naturalistic goes to show that everyone loves a bit of magic, in the sense that they want something that isn't completely real. In a musical, you can go quite wild with that and the audience will follow along completely, because they want to be entranced by the magic on stage. Take The Lion King for example. The audience can see the people behind the puppets, they know they're not real animals, but still it completely takes their breath away to see an elephant walking down the aisle. You don't need to tell them it's not a real elephant, of course they know that. But being swept up in the moment and magic of the theatre gives everyone an incredible ability - the ability to imagine. The audience fills in the blanks, they make these creatures seem real, more so than the puppeteers do. And I think that's amazing.

Similarly, there is a play on Broadway at the moment called the War Horse. They use puppets as well for the horses and it's the same story. It's not realistic in the sense that they look like puppets, and you can see the people within the puppets, but the audience simply doesn't care. They make it a real horse.

Now I think that's magic, don't you?

Questions

Once there was a woman who had two shoes and one of them she laid in the river. The shoe nestled between the river grasses and slowly over the days the woman sang to the shoe so that she might have a husband. The shoe grew first a baby and then a boy and then a young man until at last the woman came to the river and found a fully grown man sitting on the river's edge.

"If you bring me the shoe to match this one," she said to the man, showing him the shoe that was the pair of the one she had placed in the river, "you shall marry the spirit of the river and you and your children will have eternal life."

The man said, "And where might I find this shoe?"

"It is in the last place you will look."

The man looked up and saw the moon, who was going to bed late that day.

"I could ask the moon, but as that is the first place I have looked I am bound to be unsuccessful, so instead I shall ask the sun," he said.

The sun was not happy to be troubled by a man but she said she had seen a shoe just like that on the banks of a great river which flowed down from this very river and was no more then a few days's walk. The man was well pleased and set off downstream. But the way was hard and the pathway treacherous beside the wild river. As the man walked his skin grew fur and soon he had transformed into a wolf. The sun passed him by and laughed at his travels.

"You will never find eternal life as a wolf," she said.

The man now spoke to the moon, who was that night full on the horizon and so close enough to talk with.

"The sun has tricked me. Where might I find the show I am seeking?"

I have seen one just like it in the depths of this river, but you must swim deep to find it."

In the light of the moon the wolf swam in the river but no shoe could he find. He was washed downstream in the water's flood and as he journeyed his fur was washed away and he was clothed instead in the shimmering scales of a fish. At last he was swept into the ocean and washed to the show and his fish form slipped from him as he lay on the cold sand. There on the beach a white bird spoke to him. "If you climb that tree over t

here you will find the shoe you seek," she said. "But remember it is in the last place you will look."

And so the man began climbing the tree. When he was only a small way up his hands grew sharp, and soon his arms and legs were black and shiny, and he was transformed into a small beetle. The wind blew at him and rain fell and many times did he cling to the tree for life. At last, at the top of the tree, he found the bird who had laughed at him. She fluttered her wings in the breeze.

"Fly to that mountain over there and look into the waters of the blue lake and you will see the shoe, and there you may choose the gift of eternal life, if you so wish it."

The man was transformed into the shape of a great raven and flew high into the sky and far across the land to the last peak, where the bright light of ice glo

wed white in the sky. Though it took all his endurance to fly so far, at last he gazed into the lake. But, instead of his own reflection, he saw only the sky.

"I am nothing," he said, dismayed. "The lake does not even note my presence. I began as a man and I have journeyed the pathways of beast, fish, insect and bird, but now I am nothing."

"What form would you seek?" said the woman from the river

, appearing beside him at the water's edge.

"My own true form," said the man.

And so the man became the shoe he had grown from in the river.

"You see," said the woman, "you are what you were seeking."

I came across this story in a book called 'The River Wife' by Heather Rose. The whole book is very fable-like, such as this story, and tells the tale of a wom

an who is part of the spirit of a river, and has to keep it in order. She is a human by day, and a fish by night, and dies if she is too far from her river, or too far from water. She falls into love with a human man, despite her promises to her father (another human) to never go near them.

I love stories like these. Yes, they're very stylistic. Yes they can be slightly predictable in their formulation (generally character + question + three tests/experiences = meaning-of-life-style-moral) but they always mean something. Always. It's never just a story for the sake of being a story.

Now this one in particular, I have cropped slightly. There is a tiny bit more to the story (he comes back to life, marries the river woman and they live eternal life with shape-shifting babies) but I like it when it finished right here, because something stands out to me about one of the points of the story. And that is, boy, we think too much sometimes.

I think what the majority of the story is trying to get across is how much we pointlessly question things. It's always how, what, how, what, how, who, when, what, where, what with human beings. We always want to know more, know everything. And in some ways that's a brilliant thing. But in other ways it's entirely meaningless. Lik

e in this story. The man was desperate to know who he really was, wasn't he? By the end of his journey he had lost all sense of purpose, and he wanted to regain it. And the enlightened answer to his plea? You're a shoe.

And we're people. Maybe we're in the exact same situation. We ask the 'Who am I?' questions all the time. And I have to say I don't quite understand them. The whole 'I need to go find who I am' soul-searching thing. Perhaps we should take a leaf out of thi

s book and simplify it, because in all honesty, if I asked 'Who am I, God?!' I was probably get - "You're Emily, stupid."

Maybe God wouldn't say that.

Either way, it's a simple answer. And while I am cautiously spiritually optimistic, I cannot possibly believe that through years of soul-searching and questioning my existence I would find a different answer from 'You're Emily' because basically that is all I am. I am a human, yes, I am a girl, yes, I am Emily. What else is there? If we're asking what we're here for that's a different question entirely, and one I think is answered simply by 'to live'.

So who am I and why am I here? 'I am Emily and I am here to live.' and isn't that a terrific and simple life motto? You don't need anything else!

This is what I think the story is saying in it's round-a-bout way. It's saying, while you can look for who you are as much as you want - to the point where who you are is completely lost in your turning it upside down and inside out to examine it - it's a simple, straightforward, you-are-you answer, and the simplicity and straight-forwardness of this is the exact thing we need.

Anything else and we all seem to get far too confused.

So there you go. That's my personal take on this fable. I bet you read something different into it. Share in comments if you want or keep it to yourself. And t

here's no saying I'm right either, but my answer works for me, and you know what? That's all I want.