WIZARD ROCK WEEKEND and more!

I feel quite bad for not having posted at ALL in the last week. Last week literally nothing happened. I slept for the entire week trying to recover from the weekend before.

The show was EPIC! The only hitches happened in my set, which is okay because I feel I can take ownership over Siriusly Hazza P and Harry and the Potters' successes in a tiny way for actually being the person who organised the concert. It was a great weekend. I just can't stress how amazing my friends are. James and Lucy, Mary and Janice, my family - MY PIANO TEACHER, EVEN? All helped in some way and were there to support me. God. Amazing, really. The actually progression of the day went so eerily smoothly. There were no disasters. Well, my friend Martha has a seizure after my set but like, these things happen. More than 200people showed up. I'm still in shock.

The after party was cool too and culminated in me collapsing at 2.30am. Whimp.

---:D---

Today this happened:

Me:Maybe getting a cat would help you with your paranoia.
Sister: I'm not paranoid!
Me: You called the police on some mice in your house....

---:D---


God I can't believe how long it's been since I posted, really. Here are some photos:


I was in Cheshire visiting my friends a few weeks ago. They brought me to a BOUTIQUE that was NAMED AFTER ME!



Laura and Cathrin also brought me to a bakery which had SUCH tempting confectionary. I sampled 6 cakes and took the rest home to my father. :D


In the bakery I got a hug from Robert, my man cardi who I named after my boo, Robert Downey Jr.


Later I murdered them at the dinner table.


From the show weekend!

On Saturday we went into town with some Wizards and Witches.


Neil, Mel, James, me, Lizzy, Matt on our way to the Opera House


And in the evening I had everyone over for a barbecue at m'house:



THE SHOW!!!


Siriusly Hazza P



Me with a Hazza P on either side.


Harry and the Potters working the crowd!



Me, Cathrin and Ellie doing our thang.



GOOD TIMES!

Pimping the Maids

Words:

Sadomasochism, homosexual, incest.


Moderately coherent thoughts:


'Pimping the Maids' was a multi-media exploration of Jean Genet's play 'The Maids.'

In the original play two sisters, Claire and Solange take turns in role playing the brutal murder of their mistress. It's based on a real story of the Papin sisters; two French maids who murdered their employer in 1933. In 'Pimping the Maids,' the audience was shown a selection from a material from a work-in-progress.

To be honest, it was quite weird. But that's good, to me the original play was weird. The whole concept is weird and it's even weirder when you read about the Papin sisters. It took place in the UCC Drama lab, which is where I expect weird experimental things to go down.

My favourite part was the soundscape. It was a combination of electronic sounds and strings being used in various ways. There was a man sitting to the side of the stage bowing, winding and tapping strings and playing pre-recorded speeches and (once) an opera aria. I found his goings-on pretty fascinating. I spotted what looked like a tiny hammered dulcimer that had a picture of the creepy Papin sisters glued to it.



I REALLY LIKED how they tied in the sense of tension throughout the different media. Over the drama lab's fireplace (yes, fireplace), there was a projected looped video of "Madame" looking down over the audience and actors sternly, portrait-style. The strings in the soundscape played a major part in the creation of tension. At one point the sound guy played the sound of wire strings being tightened, so that the audience is wondering when breaking-point is going to be reached.

Another example of the tension was in what I would like to call "the toilet roll scene." Madame stands on a stereo-speaker/pedestal over the two maids, who unroll and pull sheets of toilet roll. The more submissive maid seems able to break off the paper and bend the sheets, while the more frustrated, dominant maid pulls the sheets taught until they break. All the while a high-pitched whirring noise plays over the rest of the soundscape.

There was some spitting that I'd really rather not think about. But there was some amazing movement by the "Madame."

Different Things.

This morning as surreal. I wasn't at work. Work finished last Friday and yesterday was a bank holiday. There was a weird moment where I'd just cleaned the kitchen and hulled a load of strawberries for jam and I thought "I shouldn't be here." It was bittersweet because I would have been going into a double practical class which I never enjoyed but I sort of missed that sense of very fixed purpose.

So instead of shouting at a load of fourteen-year-olds, I made strawberry jam. :) I used a recipe from out family bible (below) which uses quite a troubling amount of sugar.











This evening I made chocolate chip and hazlenut cookies....




Can you tell I need a purpose?

Vision Board

Yesterday I made one of those lame-ass vision board things. You're meant to find pictures of what you want in life and shtick 'em onto a poster. Or, alternatively flick through magazines and just cut out the pictures that capture you or spark your imagination.

I wish I had a camera so that I could show you what I put in. I'll have to improvise with Google Images.


FOOD:
Muffin with star:


Trifle:


Mackerel:


Raspberries:


Blueberries:


Vegetable soup:


An orange:


Cup of tea in pretty flowery china teacup:


A laattteee:


Woman in apron holding a tray of cupcakes:


FLOWERS:
A yellow flower:


Lavender x2:


Girl with bunch of flowers:


Misc:
Girl spinning in pretty purple dress.


Needle and thread:


1940s lady looking mysteriously happy (Yes. I know this is Grace Kelly. She's closest to the picture):


Paper party streamers:


Cracked Tree trunk:


Flicked Liquid Eyeliner:



Plus the words GORGEOUS CURLS and five pictures of Robert Downey Jr.

When I went to sleep last night I decided that this meant nothing more that I was hungry when I was making it. Which is true, but something is clear here. I like food. A lot. I only recently realised for certain that good food is one of my passions in life. No matter what I end up doing - if I work in SuperValu stocking the frozen section - cooking, baking, growing and eating food will ALWAYS be a part of me. I was brought up around recipes and ingredients. People knew we were about excellent food. It's true that I would like my career to involve food. That is one of the reasons why "event management" is such a positive thing for me to do - it's stretchy. It means I can incorporate my passions (music, food, dresses, people, singing, talking) into my life.

There's kind of a crossover there with nature. Flowers and fruit.

I'd love to let a psychoanalyst analyse this for me and tell me what it meanssssss!

ALSO! Since I pasted all those pictures, my camera arrived from Ebay. :D So I may post one later of the chart! :D

Song of the Provinces

On Wednesday (28th April) the choir I sing in, the Fleischmann Choir, opened the Cork International Choral Festival with the Cork School of Music Orchestra. Under the leadership of our conductor Dr. Geoff Spratt we performed Song of the Provinces, a piece written by Professor Aloys Fleischmann himself.

The wonderful thing about this musical work is that it requires audience participation. After the melody is taught, the audience must join in with the choir several times. It's amazing how it came together on the night. Putting it together with the frankly EPIC orchestral accompaniment in rehearsals was one thing, but to hear the audience join in for the main melody was just unbelievable. It gave me shivers and I couldn't keep the grin from my face.

I think Prof. Fleischmann was there in spirit, singing with us. He had admirable views on the importance of choirs in communities and it's undeniable that the the sense of community in the City Hall on Wednesday was at its strongest while everyone sang together.

Below is the video of the performance. Watch Geoff conduct the audience, I love that!

Plans.

This is not how I thought my life would go. Things were meant to be easy. I was going to be "discovered." Whirlwind adventures, amazing loves, fabulous friends. Coffee cups and scarves and studios.

Let's just say it didn't go according to plan. But what do I do now? I fashioned a little life for myself. A little life. A little singing, a little writing, a little traveling. But I want BIG! I want GIANT! I want FAST! I want NOW!

Distraction is a big problem. Something jumps in front of me and I have to look at it. I'm like a seven-year-old. I need to knuckle down. What a waste. Formulating a complete thought is not exactly something I'm overly familiar with. It's not exactly a surprise that I've never followed anything through.

Maybe there's too much to do. Maybe I need to do one thing and just DO IT. I have too many interests. There are things I can see myself doing: writing, singing, organizing, performing. But not just one. All. Has to be all.

It has to be all.

Schoooool!

I teach music to second years (14 year olds). Maybe studying Drama and Theatre Studies at university completely spoiled me, but I can never understand why our education system requires nothing more from the pupils than to sit an absorb the information only to regurgitate it later in an exam. What's the point? That's not learning. That's glassy-eyed recitation.

Their lack of motivation and team-skills astounds me. Out of two second year classes, I can only trust one in a practical situation not to just start screaming and banging things. They don't want to listen to me, maybe because all they do all day is listen to teachers. They are actually so used to the classroom situation that as soon as it changes, they get out of control.

It's quite sad. It's sad for me to see but it's really sad for them because they are missing out on so much. They need teamwork exercises. They need to learn to respect each other and to respect the teacher.

The weird thing is that they don't actually understand why the would benefit from listening to each other and listening to the teacher. And I completely understand! I was exactly like that when I was in secondary school. We all were. We didn't know anything different. But having been to university has just completely opened my eyes to everything that could be done to make school a better, more educational place for the country's teenagers.

Shaaaaaame. :(