a strange guilt

Today, I was sitting on the floor upstairs watching something funny, and I banged my fist on the floor at one point. Just once, though.

My poor brother, Nick, was downstairs on the phone, heard the single thump, and he thought I had died.

I feel strangely guilty about that.......

..........................

I guess I should feel more guilty about taking up your time with this entry.













Or, maybe I should see how long I can carry this on, to see if I become guilty. I might receive some insight into my psyche.











































Nope, not feeling guilty yet.









































Not yet.



















































Still not feeling guilty.






































































OK, now I'm realizing that this doesn't really work b/c you can easily scroll down and not actually try to read the empty space.








Now I feel decidedly unintelligent.









Thanks a lot.


























................do YOU feel guilty now?

In Between Shows

We had two "Droods" last night and we just did the first of two today.

Speaking of which, I gave a video of my stuff to the title character of the show, and she seemed to be geniunely impressed. She, in turn, gave me a CD of a song she wrote and performed which is quite good.

It was a little odd, though, b/c when I first bumped into her after she'd seen my video, if I had to guess, it seemed like she had a negative reaction...

However, when I had the chance to talk to her, it was apparent that she was impressed, and that what I was noticing was another example of the all-too-natural competitiveness between performers. Kind of a looking-at-me-sideways thing, if you know what I mean. She was clearly positive about what she'd seen. She even used the term 'genius instrumentalism'.

But I've gotten the negative-seeming vibe at times since I was, I don't know, 15 or so and learning to play guitar stuff like Joe Satriani and Van Halen and stuff like that. From 13 or so until maybe 17, I was the kid that played better than I was supposed to and stuff like that. It still suprises me to look at where I started artistically and where I am at this point.

I mean, I'm 26, and for a couple of years now, I've mean making this more 'high-brow', 'serious' kind of music...on solo PIANO, which I've never had lessons for to speak of.

Quite an unusual turn of events, it seems. I actually can't begin to think of anyone who's had the same path. It's not better or worse, but I would say it is definitely quite unusual.

In the meantime, I'm cooking up a few more promotional ideas, and I've been wanting to write another newsletter for a while now, but I'd like to get some things firmed up first. Maybe I should start it anyway.

I'll be sending it out to more people this time, too, including some people from my summer at Opera Theatre, as well as people from last fall at The Rep.

That's about it for now. I'm going to eat something and then go back over to the theatre at 6 something for the 7 pm show.

Atrocious. Sad.

So the band Damageplan, with former heavy metal band Pantera members Dimebag Darrell (a guitarist who's thought of by many as one of the most original and influential in rock since Eddie Van Halen) and his brother Vinnie Paul, takes the stage a couple days ago in Ohio and a guy gets onstage, grabs Dimebag and shoots him in the head several times.

I'm sorry if this post is overly brash. I'm angry. I'm not even particularly familiar with any of the music. I do know that Dimebag has been revered and imitated for some years now.

Maybe I'll feel more like waxing poetic, or something just as trite, later.

I will say, though, that maybe a handful of true music snobs will have cause to look at the work of this man, a musical hero to many, and see the genius in spite of themselves.

This is rather old news, but I only heard about it tonight

http://www.mtv.com/news/topics/d/dimebag_darrell/

Grr.

ADDED 12/12:

He was killed on 12/8, the same date as John Lennon, who was only 2 years older.

A crazy night at the theatre

So, yes. It was a decidely UNcrazy night at the theatre.

ah-HAH!

I had you expecting something TOTALLY DIFFERENT, DIDN'T I?!?!?

I'm sneaky like that. Some people call me Sneaky McGhee for that very reason.

OK, fine. No one calls me Sneaky McGhee.

Anyway, I lied. It was a decidely NOT uncrazy night at the theatre, making it a CRAZY night at the theatre.

ah-HAH!

OK, I'll let it go. You see, I'm one of the spotlight operators for the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis' production of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood". For those of you who don't know, the Rep is a professional theatre with union actors from all over the place, as well as directors, scenic designers, etc. It's serious stuff, and I'm still not too sure how I got involved in it.

I don't have a technical theatre background at all. It's not my thing and I don't have that sensibility. Yet, here I am, having worked at Opera Theatre of St. Louis and The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis in scenic, sound, and lighting capacities since summer '03.

But it's been great. I've had some great experiences and met some great people. I've even given out videos of me performing my music to a lot of actors who've come through, and I've gotten some really nice praise and encouragement. Some of them ended up showing it to other actors, who I then heard from independantly, much to my suprise. One lady even bought me a Keith Jarrett CD.

It's also good for me logistically b/c both OTSL and RTSL are on the Webster campus, which has been my second home since '96. I'm also not really meant for other jobs.

OH YEAH, that aforementioned crazy night at the theatre! Sorry.

You see, last night was the official opening night. We've been working tech stuff since last Saturday, had a day off on Sunday, then two long days on Monday and Tuesday, previews the last two days, and then we opened last night.

It takes a lot to stage a musical. There's a lot of troubleshooting, trial and error, and just general getting accostumed to things. It's really only barely enough time IF YOU'RE LUCKY.

So, with that in mind, here's how things went last night:

Well, before I get into that, let me tell you a little bit about the show....

(you think I'd catch on to the fact that I can actually DELETE and REARRANGE)

.....

(and not use CAPS UNNECESSARILY)

"The Mystery of Edwin Drood" is a musical based on the unfinished novel by Charles Dickens. He died before it was finished. So, the audience gets to vote every night on three different things: who the murderer is, who the detective is, and which two characters get together to make for a kind of happy ending.

So, we're about 2/3s of the way through the first act when...

REH! REH! REH! REH! REH! REH!

Some guy just started yelling 'REH!'.

Just kidding.

The fire alarm was going off!

Everybody had to stop, and the actor onstage did pretty well to mosey offstage without breaking character or whatever. We all went outside, and, I as I suspected, it was just the light hazer (the smokemaker for the lights).

It didn't take too much time to get started again, and the audience seemed excited that something unexpected was happening. The same actor left onstage made light of it a couple more times during the course of the evening.

So, we break for intermission and come back. Things are going fine. Then, it comes time to vote for who the murderer will be.

The actors go out into the audience and write down their votes. The assistant stage manager and some others then have a very few minutes to count out the votes and give the tallys to the stage manager.

Well, this time, apparently, a lot of the votes were hard to read, so, they decided to declare the female lead of the show the murderer for the night.

This show is going to performed around 36 times. It was the first official performance.

These actors conferred with each other and were SO ANGRY at the decision to put the female lead onstage that some of them wouldn't even look at her.

This is incredible to me. These are accomplished, professional actors, all of whom, I'm sure, have gone through a lot to get to where they are. I can't believe they'd be so mad about such a stupid thing.

So, anyway, the time is coming to decide who the two lovers will be.

It is decided onstage that it will be one man and TWO WOMEN!

Completely un-alloted for in the music and the staging.

So, the man ended up standing between the two women, and they all ended up entwined at the end. It was actually really funny. Totally unexpected, and I guess that's the beauty of this format.

I assume things will calm down in regards to wat happened with this silly voting nonsense. We'll see.

The audience did seem very pleased, so, that's almost the main thing. The real main thing, though, as far as I'm concerned, is that people are enjoying themselves.

So, anyway, I'm actually having a lot more fun that I would've thought. I mean, I've never operated any lighting for any theatre stuff ever, and I was basically thrown into it. It's a little more enjoyable than the other tech stuff I've done, because there's a lot of down time in the other stuff...which is partially why I didn't think this would be much fun. But, if you're a spot operator, you're basically part of the show.

I did do a lot of theatre stuff my last two years of high school, but it was all acting stuff. Frontstage is my thing, in a sense. I got really serious about acting for a year or so, actually, studying it, reading the classical method books and etc. I've even got some drafts for a one-man show around somewhere...all of which helped to bring me to this one-man music stuff.

So, it's been interesting so far.

Interesting and DESTRUCTIVE.




(just trying to end with a bang)