Writing a play is hard, apparently.

Trust me, I checked.

To make my Modern Musicals 315 class count as a graduate level 515 class, I told Dr. Nelson that I would write a musical.

I'm not sure exactly why I thought that was an appropriate thing to say. I must have still been jet lagged.

"write a musical"!?!?!?

Andrew Lloyd Webber writes musicals (and purchases all of my favorite paintings so I can't see them, I've recently learned). I... I wake up late and and whine to Jacob and pop my zits and eat too many digestives and get love handles and get hangry and fall asleep all over the place. I am lamentably ordinary and am sick of all my clothes and rarely shave my legs and procrastinate everything and don't know how to manage money. I am one big human flaw. I don't write musicals.
But, for what it's worth, I'm trying.

In other news on the theater front, we're having a marvelous time. Jacob has seen more musicals since we've been here than in his entire 32 years combined (I think he saw...two before this. The two he came to see me in).

So, here's the run down on just a sampling of the plays I've seen in Jolly Old London:

There's nothing like seeing the Phantom of the Opera to make you want to lose weight and take voice lessons.

(No pictures, whoops)

There's nothing like seeing Carmen to make you glad you're not a terrible hussy with a death wish.

 It was Jacob's first Opera, and he hated it (we're working on this). But sitting in the Royal Albert Hall alone is a sublime experience (Side note: the Royal Albert Hall is just a quick skip through Kensington Gardens from our flat. !?!?).

This place is BIG.

There's nothing like seeing The Lion King to make you feel not only inflexible, but entirely incapable physically.

 

There's nothing like seeing Wicked to assure you that something, at least, is better in America.

Though Americans, perhaps, go a little insane waiting at the stage door in the freezing rain to meet West End stars .

There's nothing like seeing War Horse to bring back all of your girlhood equine obsessions (including, but not limited to: horseback riding lessons, a Breyer Horse collection, notebooks filled with Learn to Draw Horses attempts, multiple homemade stop animation videos starring Playmobil horses, etc.) and make you practice, incessantly, moving and sounding like a horse. 

Sue me.

And there's absolutely nothing like seeing Les Miserables  to convince you that you should NEVER attempt to write a musical.

 (I joined in their crusade...)

But guess what?

I'm still going to do it. And as terrifying as it is, I actually really like doing it. Every time I run breathlessly to my computer because some dialogue magically worked itself out in my mind or a character's back story writes itself because the character knows more about their life than I do... wow. Those moments are delicious. And a little addicting. And even though I'm beyond self-conscious to let anyone read my soul-baring, nonsensical crap script, I am more fulfilled by actually finally attempting to do this than by most other things.

So I let Jacob read some scenes. I work at the piano where I know everyone can hear, but I just do it anyway. I'm trying to write music. I'm trying to write stories. And even if they turn out as bad as I fear they will and they never speak to a single soul... at least I did what I've always felt, at my deepest depths, that I was meant to do. 

Love, drafts, and more drafts,

Banana

I had fun this weekend.

At:

Goth Prom

 

and

Octoberfest.

 (The "band" was called "The Bratwursts" for the evening)

I love it when Halloween time lasts forever.

Love, llamas, and oops-- no homework,

Banana

I'm ready to leave soon.

but I don't know where.

[more of the wonderful Josh Ritter here]

Banana

Opus 37

I’m really feeling music today. It could possibly be my radically enhanced emotional state, not much altered even by the slight overdose on Midol I might have had this morning.

Or it could just be that music is what brings life to my veins and thus oxygen to my brain and clarity to my eyes and richness to my senses. It always has, after all. I’ve been ignoring music; skulking around, hiding behind corners when I see it coming. And I’m not sure why. 

I’ve just been so afraid lately. But it’s hard to say exactly what I’m afraid of. Maybe it’s nothing. That is, maybe I’m scared of dissolving into nothingness. Amounting to nothing. Being nothing. Or at least not being what I always dreamed I would be and what I’m now doing nothing to become. And returning to the piano with stiff, forgetful fingers and forcefully shaking my startled voice awake, which comes out creaky from neglect, is scary when I’m already so scared.

And yet, today I’m craving only one of those magical corners with a small open window and eighty-eight slightly dusty keys. They’ve always been such a refuge- such a sanctuary- waiting patiently to absorb every moment of disappointment or frustration or euphoria with life and its potential for being lived. It’s all there in those keys and my fingers that know them so well, even if they’re a little awkward at first reuniting. But like any true friends, they soon know they never really spent time apart, after all. They quickly remember one another’s idiosyncrasies; their shortcomings and their greatest abilities. Their mutual desire to produce something worth listening to. Worth getting lost in. Worth feeling.

So I sit here in this stark, florescent box of a facility, as far away from that corner as you could really get, listening to the genius of Dustin O’Halloran and Iris Litchfield with itching fingers. RLS bouncing my knees all over the place under my desk, my feet blindly bumbling around, searching for the pedals. But my insides feel warm and sparkly with the anticipation of greeting one of my oldest and dearest friends. Perhaps the most loyal friend of all, always waiting patiently, always knowing that someday I’ll come back to raise the blinds and crack open the rain streaked window, to stroke the old worn oak bench, lift the cover, inhale a deep, nervous breath, arrange my cold, frightened fingers into the key of G and…

Play.

-Banana 

 [These photos are from a  special day in Hawaii about a year and a half ago. Taken by Bremen McKinney and me and featuring Tessa Brady and my hands, feet, and occasional indiscernible reflection]

A confession

Happy love songs often make me sad.
There's something wrong here.

I love ya, Frank. But something's gotta change.

♥Anna

"I am merely an instrument"

"And you, sir, are out of tune!"

"Joyful Noise" by Tim slover
my first time playing a "possibly still syphilitic whore".
And my first university show.
I got to sing and act with dear friends and was redeemed at the end through song and "The Messiah." (the song one and the real one)

And it was good.

love, itchy wigs, and Hallelujah choruses,
Anna