Winter Solstice, England, and Cold Weather

Since I last posted I have performed in two shows (Emma in early October and The Last Night of Ballyhoo, which closed on Saturday night), costumed another, and attempted to keep up with schoolwork (the bane of my existence). So blogging has unfortunately been low on my list of priorities. Tonight though, as I sit in bed with a cup of tea, a cold and anxiously awaiting the light snow we have been promised I picked up a favorite book of mine, Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher. This is a wonderful book set in England in Winter. Two of my favorite things. It's a beautiful story about people finding themselves and each other at the most magical time of the year and of course, as with all Ms. Pilcher's books, a little lovestory (or 3) is thrown into the mix.
I first found the book at the local library sale. I had become entranced with Ms. Pilcher some years ago from an article in Victoria magazine about her home and writing and included in the article was a short excerpt from her novel, Coming Home. I soon found the novel and read it, but while I enjoyed it was at the time too young to fully understand and enjoy it all. Some years later right after coming to university I found Winter Solstice for a mere dollar and snatched it up and took it off to my brand new apartment to read. I have come back to this book at least once a year since and often at other times through the year as well. There is just something about this one that is unlike the rest of Ms. Pilcher's work. It is even better, even cosier, even warmer than the rest.

Cliffe High Street

Lewes, East Sussex

Now I shall have a bit of a ramble about England. My mum has always wanted to live in England. We have ancestors from there and it is quite frankly in our opinion the most wonderful country on the face of the Earth. I'm an American girl and proud of it, but England is just magical, I can't even describe what it is about England, I just know that someday I will live there. I decided when I was about 15, around the same time I decided I wanted to be an actress that I wanted to live in England. Practically, for a theatre actor, you can't find a richer place to work. With theatres all over the country and the respect and love that the people have for the artform, it is no wonder that an actor would want to work there. But it's more than just the practicality. I look at pictures of certain parts of England and they just feel like home. I have been looking at a wonderful site http://www.picturesofengland.com/ for the past couple of days to entertain myself while sick. They have wonderful picture tours, I've just finished "England In Winter". I'm not sure when it will happen, but I am determined that one day I will live there. I think the West Midlands would be a good fit for me.


Quinton Road Harbone West Midlands









And now I will close this post with saying the chance is slim: but it's supposed to snow tonight!!!!! My Christmas tree is up and plugged in, my Menorah is in the window (we'll cover religion and holidays some other time, let's just say we have Chrismukkah for now)and I am sitting here in bed wrapped up in blankets hoping to go out and at least see a few white flakes falling from the sky sometime tonight! Here are a few of my favorite snowy England pictures to get you in the cold weather mood!
~Elena

Farm House
Somewhere in Essex

Hurdlemakers Arms, Essex

Umberleigh

Poetical Musings

This is a piece I wrote several months ago. If you have any idea of whom I speak, leave your guess in the comments, and let me know what you think of it.

OnWill

Once again in the throes of disillusionment
Your words wrap my soul with reassurance
And I know that there is a place where
My dreams can flourish
Where the thing I long for most will be produced.
This is why I come back to your words
This is why I wear the ring that symbolizes you
And others like you.
Because no matter what travesty I hear
What cheap rendering is thrust upon me
Your words, the words of the ages
Bring me the solace and comfort that I crave.

Beatnik Poetry or How I'm Falling in Love With Jack White All Over Again

This all started this past Christmas when my Dad received It Might Get Loud, a documentary featuring Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White. Amidst the flurry of present opening the movie was found, and my very suprised Dad promptly had a fit over it and exclaimed that it must be played immediately. To say he is a U2 fan would be a giant understatement. Truthfully I paid almost no attention to the beginning of the film. Suffering from a general lack of sleep and too much Christmas cheer and having unwrapped all our presents, I was lounging on the couch chatting with a couple of cousins, sipping water, and deciding upon a thorough dislike of cognac. And then I remember seeing a sunset on the tv, and weathered boards of a house. I don't remember much about it ottherwise, except hearing this music with a rock, blues, bluegrass mixed sound and a haunting quality to it.



Fast forward several months. I'm doing a random search for music, this one I think "songs about vampires". I found a couple that I liked, made a playlist, and promptly forgot about them. Then, happily rediscovered them awhile later. They were "Blue Veins" by The Raconteurs and "Satin In A Coffin" by Modest Mouse. I had those two songs on repeat for several days straight! I had liked other songs by both bands some time ago, but never really given either much thought. This happened to coincide with the creation of my first project for the directing class I am currently in. While coming up with the premise of my project and forming the ideas behind the staging of it I played these songs over and over. And found more songs by each band that I liked. And played them over and over. Then it was performed. And my professor said "I'm getting this maybe 50's vibe, very stylistic, with these icons and this really beatnik, seedy feel".



Hunh?! Beatnik? The only time I have ever heard the word had been in conjunction with seedy, strung out artsy people, and not in a good way. Now, admittedly, my project was a performance art piece (a haiku) that was inspired by the painting The Boulevard of Broken Dreams and my actors were portraying Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, James Dean and Humphrey Bogart. But seedy? Beatnik? I didn't even really know what beatnik meant! So, I came home and Googled it. And the whole idea was interesting. So I read some more. And along the way Googled Jack White and started looking up his other music. And then I found The Dead Weather. And suddenly my mind's eye took a turn and began to want everything to have that weathered quality that I remember from those boards on It Might Get Loud. Luckily it rained for several days straight so the sky was nice and dreary and I realised how much I love the whole idea of A.) the beatnik culture and B.) music like this. Straight Bluegrass is still a bit much for me to digest, but a banjo and fiddle mixed with some awesome rock? Just makes it rock that much better in my opinion. And in listening to all this new music I found that my creativity has just been amped up a notch and I have been writing more in the past two weeks than I have in the past two months. Add to this an extreme influence by David Lynch's work at the moment and my slight obsession with the aforementioned painting, film noir, and creepy victorian stuff and it's quite fun inside my head at the moment!



So I now go off for a nice cup of tea, my new book of beatnik poetry in hand to peruse and a very difficult decision to make: to watch the new version of Hamlet I just bought, that I had never heard of, and know nothing about.... or the new version of Macbeth, which looks like True Blood and Underworld crossed with Macbeth. Hmmmm.

Creepy amazingness by The Dead Weather:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0YI0UUazkU&ob=av3e

And a clip from It Might Get Loud, Jack White plays some blues and talks about musical philosophy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj8f0w_SMnw

Counter Culture Blues

The road stretches out right and left
She stands on the side
Looking at the thunderheads above
Trying to capture them, and failing
The sky is that midsummer, dusty color that only happens right before a storm
Only an Oklahoma sky can look like that.
She’s fascinated by a sign
That heralds the attractions of the place she is
But no one is there now.
Just the wind
Rustling through the trees and the grass
Moving through the field across the road
Like whispers coursing through the blades
Cars pass
The children at the house nearby play
But the whole place has such a desolate air
Of counter culture blues
The light wind rolls the dust.



Poem and picture by me.

And The Moonbeams Kiss the Sea

So for the past two weeks, I have been reading virtually everything aloud. (When I'm at home, I don't just randomly read aloud in public!) Books, magazine articles, poems, cereal boxes, what have you. This is because I am currently studying and training in the Lessac system of voice and body work. Basically that's a nice, posh way of saying every week I go learn how to talk. Woohooo!!! But I thought I'd share with you one of my favorite poems that I've been reading alot, just because I like it and also I get to "paint lovely pictures" while saying it.

Hope you enjoy!

Love's Philosphy by Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle -
Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea -
What are all these kissings worth
If thou kiss not me?

Finland

I have this affection for Finland. I mean, on most people's list of "I want to go there" Finland is not generally near the top, or even on it, at least, the people I have had this conversation with. I guess it started when I discovered the band HIM. 5 Finnish born, amazingly talented men who pour just the right amount of doom, gloom, guitars and keyboards, along with sinfully luscious vocals by Ville Valo and I was hooked. (They, after more years than I will soon be wanting to admit, reign as my favorite band) Upon discovering HIM though, and reading a bit about them and I thought "Finland, Hmm, there's a place you don't hear about everyday" so I went and got the European travel book out of the bookcase and flipped over to the Finland section. It was beautiful. Not in the fairytale way of Kent in England, or the pastoral way of the French countryside, but in a wonderful way none the less, a way that I can't even fully describe. Maybe that's just because I'm tired, and seem to have already exhausted my list of adjectives. What ever reason, I became more entranced by Finland, and the Finnish people. So what did I do? I bought a book. And read about Finnish people. After listening to a couple of Ville Valo's interviews in Finnish, and hearing how beautiful the language is, I started listening to other stuff in Finnish, because I liked how it sounded. I even bought another book (really, you should see my apartment, the books outnumber all other possessions including clothes. I could have an army of books) on Finnish language and started reading it. I didn't get very far in my study though, because, well, I got busy. But I know a few words, and it is still on my list of things do. And the How to speak Finnish book often gets very interesting looks when people come over for the first time and are nonchalantly trying to see what on earth all of those books are about. So I haven't been there, yet, but I plan to go. For now, I leave you with a few pictures from Finland and one very interesting link. If you click it you will be taken to a web cam from the Yllas ski resort in Finland. They have archives on the side, so you can see what it looked like there going back for months. Okay, after typing that, I see that it sounds rather boring, but, I enjoy looking at it every once in a while and maybe you will too.

These four photos are from Heikki Alanen's site.

Lake Finland or Lake Saimaa

Espoo, Finland

Pier in Helsinki, Finland

Vammala, Finland

I have no clue where this is, I just know it's somewhere in Finland, and I like it!

Then, two more pictures, both of the Church of Kankaanpaa.

And the webcam link: http://www.panoraama.com/live/yllas/index.html

Hope you enjoyed!! Please follow my blog and feel free to leave comments!

Elena

A Book That Only 37 People Will Ever Read

Recently, while watching an episode of one of my favorite detective shows, Inspector Lewis, I heard the following quote: "I'm a scholar... I'd be perfectly happy to write books that only 37 people will ever read." This got me thinking. In a similar way, this is how I feel about acting. I'm one of those people who would be perfectly happy to do the full four hour version of Hamlet with all of the "irrelevant in today's world" (how I once heard a director describe about 2 hours of this play) bits. Why? Because I'm one of those people. You know, the strange ones who read books on the life of Shakespeare and Moliere for fun, not just when forced into it by a school assignment, or can actually recite bits of Shelley (Also the focus of an Inspector Lewis) because I genuinely like Shelley. Oh and The Canterbury Tales? Standard light reading for me. After I became involved in theatre when I was fourteen, my mother thought it was so strange that I genuinely seemed to like this stuff, but being supportive as always, one of my Christmas presents that year was a lovely leather bound edition of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which has proved a valuable thing to have over my past three years as a theatre student, plus, having lovely drawings and of course, all of the Bard's work.

But this post is not to extol one particular writer's work, or talk about leather bound books, but to examine what being an actor means to different people. In my experience (not wonderfully extensive, but definitely not limited, either) there are two types of actors: the ones who want to go somewhere, be famous, be rich, and have people know who they are, and then there are the ones who want to do the work because they simply can't stand the thought of breathing without it, who want to do the "dead" plays because they think they're fun, who like the camaraderie and fellowship of being in a company and who want to enrich people's lives and make them see things in a new way and understand things about life and art, that they previously hadn't understood before, no matter how much they aren't being paid. Now, this is not to say that the latter category can't be rich and famous, or that the former category doesn't care about art and the like, or that either one is right or wrong. And of course, there are many more facets to each type. To think that would imply that people are simple, and if theatre has taught me one thing, it is that people are never simple.

So I guess the real reason for today's ramble is considering the reasons why we do what we do in life. The majority of my life is spent working in some form or fashion on theatre based things. But why do you spend your life working on what you do? Some people I know work on things because they feel called by God to do so. Some people, because they just enjoy it. Some because they don't have a calling or love to work on so, they just go through the motions of life without any real purpose. Whatever your reasons for the things you do, whatever you do, whoever you are, make sure you love it enough that you would be willing to do the equivalent of "writing a book only 37 people in the world would read" because without passion in your life, for you life and pursuits there is only simple existence. And that in my opinion is the saddest kind of life there is.

As Stella Adler said "In life, as on the stage, it's not who I am but what I do that's the measure of my worth and the secret of my success. All the rest is showiness, arrogance and conceit."

Living In The Moment, or Reclaiming Phrases

Why do we feel the need to live in anything other than the here and now? Perhaps it has something to do with a sense of not having what we want in our lives at the moment: a boy, a girl, a job, a friend, a possession, that makes us think about things that are different than what we have at the moment. When you really stop to look at the world around you, right at this very moment, it beautiful. Just looking at the way the sky looks through the leaves of a tree at sunrise, how the song that you have on collides with that image and perfects the moment, echoing the beauty and adding to it. Or perhaps its the way the trees look at night (I'm a tree person), seemingly black silhouettes against the inky blue of the sky at the period of time between dusk and night. Just stopping to look, truly look at these little things will give you the most amazing feeling in the world, if you can put everything else away for just a few moments. I find it very difficult to do this, to stop thinking about what happened at work, or might happen tomorrow, next week, next year. Especially since I spend the majority of my time creating or living in imaginary worlds, it is difficult to be completely and wholly in this one. Being in that moment is truly magical. And being present in the here and now is the ultimate achievement for an actor. As an actor I have heard the phrase "In the moment" so often, and often so ridiculously said, which an over exaggeration of all the vowels in the word moment, that I hate the phrase and often find myself awarding less credibility to persons I hear saying it often. But putting aside all past experiences with this phrase to be truly in the moment is an amazing feeling, both onstage, and off. Being truly in the moment in real life is perhaps even more important than when you achieve it and you are not in real life. (I include everyone, not just actors in this idea). Obviously we can't all just sit around and revel in every momentary atmospheric condition, no matter how fun it is, all the time. Whenever we get the chance, however, we should try it. It can be quite a strange feeling, truthfully, realizing how fleeting time is, how every second that happens is different than the one before, and the fact that we can never truly recreate that instant, but with the risk of feeling a bit strange, you take a soaring leap into the arms of the present, and gain better knowledge and appreciation of the world around you.

A Mannequin Would Be Useful...

...but then that would take all the fun out of playing dress up with long pieces of flowy material! So in addition to working as the costume designer for Looking North, an indie tv show I'm currently working on, I've recently agreed to assist with a new line of clothes a friend of mine is adding to his current jewelry business. When I was little one of my favorite things about bathtime was seeing how many "dresses" I could create by wrapping myself in bathsheets in creative fashions. Luckily, my mother thought I was cute, and didn't fuss over the amount of towels I tended to use on my fashion sprees. Last night, while practicing my veil routine for an upcoming performance, my new kitty, Persia wrapped herself around my legs while I was spinning causing my veil to become tangled, so I stopped to untangle it. In the process I noticed the veil was quite interestingly wrapped, so I went to have a look at it. Upon seeing it in the mirror, I suddenly had the most wonderful idea for a dress that would incorporate almost every aspect of the dresses that my friend and I had been discussing. I then spent the next hour with two other veils wrapping them in the perfect manner so as to see how the dress would look. I then took a couple of snaphots, so I can start drawing the dress. So basically, under the guise of "working" I spent an hour playing dressup! And I must say, I think this dress is going to be a winner. ;) So, even though a mannequin would be quite convenient, and I could stick pins in it to hold the fabric in place, and I wouldn't have to continually be running back and forth to the mirror to see if everything was in place, I just don't think it would be quite as fun as getting to play dressup is. More details will follow soon on our new endeavor.

But for now, if you would like to get involved with something that I'm working on, then you should follow the below link (to a kind of awesome blog anyway, and the above mentioned friend of mine!) and help out Looking North with its first ever fundraiser!!

http://www.collinmizell.com/2010/06/looking-north-could-use-your-help-to.html

The Night It Is Aching

Well, I have been so busy lately I haven't even been able to think about sitting down and writing a blog, but I have fleetingly thought of it once or twice before dashing off to another rehearsal, or trying to get some much needed rest. I am currently preparing for Dramapalooza, the spring festival of student directed pieces that is annually held here at Theatre @ SE. It opens tomorrow, with an evening of dance, followed by One Act Plays on Wednesday and performance art Haikus closing the festival on Thursday. It has been one of the busiest, most exhaustive times of my life, but definitely worth it and I think our audiences will thoroughly enjoy themselves at all three nights. I am excited about tomorrow, because I get to sit back, relax and be a spectator for the whole evening.

I already have my next project lined up, but this time I will be playing a different role and in a different medium. I have signed on to be the costume designer for Looking North a new tv series about a Christian family moving to a new place, moving forward with their lives after the death of the mother of the family, and trying to hold on to their Christian values in a trying world. I am very very excited to be working on this project, I have previously worked with the director, she was the Stage Manager in the production of The Mousetrap I was in this past December, and I know or have worked with several members of the cast before. I am also excited to be designing for this show because it will be the first big project I have designed and the first time I have done any work that will be filmed. I am already bursting with ideas and doing research like mad! Hair and makeup is also falling under my control, so I just get to play with all of it. I have to admit, after this festival and all my recent classwork, I am glad to be doing something in a non- acting position!

This weekend I will be going to the Dallas Museum of Art for the first time, with a friend of mine, and I am thrilled. It was a last minute decision and I have wanted to go for a very long time. We will also be visiting the Nasher Sculpture Center, and I'm being "dragged" to Half Price Books, but I guess I'll suffer through that ordeal somehow. I think I might have to start sleeping on the porch if I'm allowed in many more bookstores!

I now must get some rest but want to end this blog with a description of what the night is like tonight. Nightime has and always will be my favorite time of the day. I am most productive and creative at night, and have an intense love of just sitting in the night air, hearing the sounds of the night and noticing the subtle difference of the black of the sky and the black of the trees. Whether you can see the glimmer of the stars, my favorite constellation, Orion, hunting in the sky, or the sky is low and thick with clouds, doesn't matter. The night has and always will be a magical time for me.

Tonight the air has a slight chill and is heavy with the sounds being carried by the watery breeze. The sky is overcast, smoky brown clouds creating a sharp contrast behind the deep black of the trees that surround the building. The moon is almost obscured by these clouds, but it's thin crescent form remains visible as thin clouds drift over it, changing it's texture, but never covering it completely. A train is audible, a car, every sound magnified by the water that is hanging in the air, like the continuation of the clouds down to the earth. Everything is strangely still, as if the very atmosphere is waiting on the heavens to open up and let the clouds empty out onto the land. The clouds part suddenly, just over the part of sky that holds the moon, and it is suddenly no longer a celestial body, but a lopsided grin, smiling down on the Earth. The cicadas and tree frogs are singing a symphony, the wind chimes sway gently, but make no sound. The air grows chillier, the black wrought iron gate, closing around the red brick building, lays a sense of peace at its feet. And then the clouds descend pressing further down, the sky is completely dark, except for one tiny part. The moon seems to grow brighter as the clouds grow darker, somehow parting at the perfect moment so that the moon is always in sight, beaming down at the earth, the bemused grin remaining fixed on it's world, the constant in the ever changing landscape of the sky.

Rediscovering My Love of Art

Last week I went to the art gallery here on campus as I realized that it is housed in the building I spend the majority of my time in and I had never actually been in it in my three years here (rather odd for someone who loves art as much as I do.) I had forgotten up until recently how much I love art and how happy it makes me. The current exhibition was The Cost of Shame: Victims In The Shadows, and was a focus on violence in the lives of women. There were some wonderful pieces included in the display, but unfortunately my phone battery was dying so I didn't get pictures of all of them. These are the pictures I did get of 3 of my favorites.

I loved the natural elements of this one.

There was something so haunting about this one, it was very visually interesting about it, with the layer of black laying peeled back from the color underneath.

This was my favorite in the exhibition and was done by a friend of mine, a very talented artist, Ethan Prus. Unfortunately the colors are nowhere near as vibrant in this picture as they are in the original painting, but I just loved this painting. I thought the look in the subject's eye was marvelous. She seemed to have a mixture of defiance and a haunted quality about her and it really was so wonderful in person.

And that was my most recent forray into art, I am planning on going to some galleries in Denison next week. I didn't know there were any, but the internet can help you find many things you didn't know were there!I'm hoping for a trip to the Dallas Museum of Art soon, and am looking forward to going to the next exhibition at the gallery in the Visual and Performing Arts Center.

While searching for smoked salmon (a 3 hour adventure that will be detailed when I am no longer utterly exhausted and hungry) I stumbled upon a metaphysical store run be a Methodist and a Jew. They had an array of items (of course I saw the sign, turned around and popped in for a looksee) including crystals, herbs, books, jewelry and incense and had a lovely conversation with the proprietors. The lady used to take bellydance classes. I left cards which they graciously allowed me to display and purchased some tea.

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Spring Madness

I went a bit mad a few weeks ago and purchased 3 large pots several bags of potting soil, bulbs, seeds and two new chairs for my front porch. I have been meaning to do this since I first moved into my apartment almost three years ago. The Western view from my second floor balcony/porch is quite beautiful with lots of tall trees behind the other apartment building in the complex and the sky is lovely at night. But I had been putting it off with various excuses and so was only buying the occasional potted mum and standing leaning against one of the posts to look at the night sky. "Enough!" I thought on the first truly springy day here and with thoughts of a pot or two with some pansies in them I rushed to the only nursery in town. Unfortunately they not only had almost no plants, the proprietor was so rude to me upon my arrival that I hopped back into my car and set out for Walmart. After a good hour spent testing chairs to see what was most comfortable and trying to decide if I could grow irises (my favorite!) in pots I left the store with the lovely array of items pictured below. I have yet to get the pots done as the weather has not been cooperating with me (snow on the first day of Spring!) or my schedule has not allowed for it, but I am determined I will get them done this week so my bounty of lettuce and herbs can start growing to be followed by (hopefully) irises and lillies later in the season. I can say that the chairs are wonderfully comfortable and I have been found sitting in them quite often to gaze at the stars or watch the sun set through the trees. Next on the agenda is a little table to set a candle or two on and accomodate dining al fresco.