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Olitchie
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Name: Alyssa
Metro:
Interests: Figuring out this whole college thing; Improv; getting real mail; reading, writing; sweet tea; weather - not the study of it, but whatever it is like outside at the moment
Expertise: Duct tape, falling over, finding myself in awkward situations, getting delayed in airports, being easily entertained
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  quidsquidwhat
Member Since:
11/28/2004
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| I have relocated to http://www.alyssakayekeysor.blogspot.com
The myriad reasons for this move include:
- An effort to make myself write more consistently this summer.
- A pretense and being slightly more grown up than when I started xanga fourish years ago.
- All the cool kids are doing it.
- What does the word "xanga" mean, anyway?
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| I was writing a paper for my Modern Dance class, and Liz looked over my shoulder
and laughed. "I love that your Modern Dance paper has dialogue."
It
had not occurred to me that it might not. That is how papers work,
right? You write what happened, what people said, how things looked and felt, what they made you think of ...
Wait. Crap. That's a nonfiction essay, not a paper.
I have just done an assignment that doesn't exist. I mean, it
isn't completely off topic. Maybe it will work. Time to reread the syllabus:
Attend one performance of professional, modern dance. Articulate your observation of the company's use of key concepts in a 3-page paper. Select one dance and include
your personal thoughts on the piece's theme and the choreographer's
ability or inability to communicate successfully with you. However, this is NOT a production critique; you are to focus on the key concepts. Degree of conceptual understanding and of original thought will be especially looked for. 30%
Whew. I remembered to include key concepts from the course - how the dancers use their abs, how they use space, etc.
Then I reread my essay more closely and realized that some of the stuff I'd written
never actually happened. It isn't false exactly; I can picture what it would have been like and how it would have looked and sounded if those things had happened. They might as well have happened, which makes them perfectly appropriate for a creative nonfiction essay. Not only is that approach to nonfiction appropriate, it's expected. The idea must be conveyed, and if the most efficient way to do that is to invent a conversation, that's ok.
Annie Dillard said once:
After you've written, you can no longer remember anything but the
writing. However true you make that writing, you've created a monster.
This has happened to me many, many times, because I'm willing to turn
events into pieces of paper. ...
Memory is insubstantial. Things keep replacing it. Your patch of
snapshots will both fix and ruin your memory of your travels, or your
childhood, or your children's childhood. You can't remember anything
from your trip except this wretched collection of snapshots. ... If you
describe a dream you'll notice that at the end of the verbal
description you've lost the dream but gained a verbal description. You
have to like verbal descriptions a lot to keep up this sort of thing. I
like verbal descriptions a lot.
Wait. Crap. This isn't supposed to be creative nonfiction. Look back at that essay assignment. This is an observation paper. I do not know the formal structure for an observation paper, but I sure bet that it doesn't include things that never actually happened. In fact, if there is one thing you are absolutely NOT supposed to do in an observation paper is make things up
However, it is after 2:00 AM, so, you know what? A creative sort-of-nonfiction essay is just going to have to work. So there, good night.
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| I've just finished T.J.'s Level 5 at i.O. Chicago. On our last day of class, T.J. told us, "I'm sending you to Noah. His teaching style is different from mine. He will not cuddle* you with his words."
Our first exercise today with Noah Gregoropoulos was to take turns standing silently and neutrally in front of the class for about forty-five seconds. Then, the class made observations about what neutral looked like for each person. ("Neutral" meaning no intentional layers of added quirks or character choices.) What unconscious ticks or habits did we observe? If this person was a character just as they are, what character would they be?
For instance, one guy stood with good posture and a smile. He had straight, white teeth. He also happened to be wearing a tie. Even without the tie, he seemed like a salesman or a politician. It was in his confidence and the way he was smiling. One girl stood with her eyes wide and her lips pursed so that she looked either angry or nauseated. She means business either way, and she won't talk to you unless she has to.
I was at the end of the line to go. I stood for my forty-five seconds and then listened to the discussion. After noticing that I was standing very straight (a side-effect of seven weeks of modern dance class), they noticed that I look with my eyes instead of with my whole head.
Then they discussed what kind of character I made them think of. For the record, these people were all strangers. I'd been in classes
with a couple of them before, but most of them had never met me. These
are first impressions.
One guy said, "She seems like that person at the library or on the bus who keeps looking over at you, not because she's interested in what you're doing, but because your iPod is too loud or you're tapping your fingers on your book. She probably won't actually tell you to shut up, though, unless you really do something to push her over the edge."
Another guy said, "Really? I thought of her more like that teacher that has a great connection with her students. She's amazing in the classroom, and the kids love her and work hard for her. She doesn't fit in with the teachers, though. If she has to spend time in the teachers' lounge, she sits in the corner and reads."
The last comment was from a guy named John. John said, "I thought she looked like that woman who is staring out the window and trying to be calm, but she knows that the gremlins are coming. They've come often enough that she knows she shouldn't be startled, so she's trying to play it off like she's not upset, like this is just another day with the gremlins."
So that is the first impression I give off: a passive-aggressive, misfit teacher whose home is often plagued by gremlins.
---
Congratulations, Greenville DI. The East Texas region is tough, but GHS made a pretty clean sweep of it. Makes me nostalgic. I can't decide if I'm more proud of Tech (because Thomas is on it) or of Improv (because they're my progeny).
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We'll give you a complex and we'll give it a name ...
*Part of me wonders if I heard T.J. wrong, or if he meant to say "coddle." I prefer the image as I heard him say it.
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|  | Currently Listening
Elephant
By The White Stripes, White Stripes
Girl, You Have No Faith in Medicine
see related |
When I was in sixth grade, I lost a tooth during a Greenville Christian School pep rally. I think it was my last baby tooth. It bled, and I had to leave the pep rally a little early to stop the bleeding.
While I was gone, rumor spread into the gym that someone was having seizures in the parking lot. Coach Wombaker had it announced that a sixth grader named Alyssa Keysor was having seizures in the parking lot. They all prayed for me.
When I came back into the pep rally, Lisa was crying, since she thought I was going to die, and people I didn't know were hugging me. All I did was lose a tooth.
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My new doctor changed some of the doses of my medicine this week, so I've been a little loopy. The biggest side effects have been nausea, drowsiness, and abnormally vivid dreams. The combination of drowsiness and vivid dreams, though, means that I doze off easily, and, when I am still half-awake, have a hard time figuring out which things I'm dreaming and which things I'm not.
For example, if I were to doze off while I was hanging out with Steve and Liz, and while I dozed off I dreamed that I was talking to Stephen Hampton, I would wake up confused. Because I would know that Stephen's dead, but I would also know that I just talked to him. And I also know that I was talking to Steve and Liz. So does that mean Steve or Liz or both are dead, too? Once I wake up all the way, I'm ok, but those few minutes of half-awake can be upsetting.
I went to the Health Center on Friday to check my blood pressure. Apparently, abnormal blood pressure is a side effect for some people, and so it seemed smart to make sure mine was normal. The nurse, Judith, checked my blood pressure, which was normal. Then she left the room and told me to wait.
Judith came in and out of the room several times over the course of an hour. Whenever she left, I would doze off. Consequently, whenever she came back to wake me up, I would get confused and have a hard time communicating. I tried to leave a couple of times, and she kept telling me to sit back down while she talked on the phone with my doctor (who wasn't actually in the office, since this was supposed to be a check-up for temperature and blood pressure).
Several arguments and hours later, I found myself in a locked ward at Linden Oaks, the psychiatric hospital in Naperville. The psychiatrist asked me questions I expected him to ask me, and I knew how to answer him. A medical student, Carlo, sat in on the evaluation.
After an hour or so, the psychiatrist said, "What we've got here is a normal case of clinical depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. But you're telling me you knew of that already. Well, I'm sorry, Alyssa, but I thought you were going to be a lot more exciting than this. The nurse from Wheaton told us you were in an altered mental state.* She thought you were having delusions.** I even brought a med student in to observe you. I mean, it's great for you, but it was a little boring for Carlo here." Sorry, Carlo.
From the time I walked into the Health Center to the time I got back to my apartment from the psych ward was seven hours.
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Coach Wombaker thought I was having a seizure. I'd lost a tooth.
Nurse Judith thought I was having delusions. I'd fallen asleep.
Skizz says that I am surrounded by incompetence. This may mean that I am a carrier, so I'm immune to it myself, but I can pass it on to the people around me. I would recommend washing your hands thoroughly before and after interacting with me in any way.
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Unrelated and anticlimactic, but I have to add this. If you find yourself in north Chicago late one weekend night, check out Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind at the Neo-Futurists theater. And call me so I can come, too.
*An altered mental state (AMS) is like a trance. Think Trelawny when she prophesied, or Donnie Darko when his therapist hypnotized him, or when he wreaked havoc on his neighborhood, or when he did pretty much anything, actually.
**Delusions are when you firmly believe in something that
is verifiably false. Like invisible-to-everyone-else pink and benevolent rabbits. Or invisible-to-everyone-else prophetic and terrifying rabbits. Or invisible-to-everyone-else rabbits of any kind, really, from
Harvey to Frank. If you end up with a particularly rationalistic doctor, he may chalk your faith up to delusion, even though religion is not usually verifiably true or false. The same cannot be said for invisible-to-everyone-else rabbits.
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| This long-overdue post will be organized in the following way:
I. Update
A. Improv
1. At Wheaton
2. At i.O.
B. College
II. Am I old enough for anything?
A. Maybe?
B. Not yet.
C. Are you sure?
III. Emotional dependence on Patty Griffin.
Skim or read as the spirit leads.
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Faux Posse had its first show of the semester on Friday, and it was lovely to be in. It was the most fluid, organic Harold this troupe has performed, and I am proud of the players I get to direct. So much fun.
My teacher at iO right now is T.J. Jagadowski. Even outside Chicago, you'd recognize him. He's the passenger in the Sonic commercials. Yeah. I'm learning improv forms from a Sonic guy. (In Chicago, you'd know him because he is T.J. of T.J. and Dave, which is sort of like a live Sonic commercial, except 45 minutes long and impossibly beautiful.)
As far as real life goes, I spend Monday, Wednesday and Friday reading and analyzing (in Medieval Literature and Psalms) and Tuesday and Thursday "getting out of my head" (in Modern Dance, Acting I and, to some extent, Creative Nonfiction Writing). It's not a bad balance, really. I am bad at balancing, though, at least in Modern Dance. So sore sometimes.
I guess I should buckle down and actually apply for the internship I want this summer, huh?
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I have been rereading Annie Dillard essays for my creative nonfiction
class. They are beautiful but also a little upsetting, because do you
know how old she was
when she won a Pulitzer for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek? 29. Not old.
I also read a post in
which Amy Poehler is quoted saying that no one begin
studying improv until age 30, and a lot of people at the at iO seem to
agree with her. Their logic is, if you're 20, what do you know? You
haven't switched jobs
yet, because you probably haven't even started a career yet. You've
never
been married, maybe even never been in a serious relationship. You've
never lost a child, hopefully never even had a child.You just
don't have the breadth or depth of experience yet to do good comedy.
Dr. Gramm says something similar to his writing students, and Mark Lewis says something similar to his acting students.
There is probably something to that, but, Amy, Dr. Gramm, Mark, listen a minute. None of us late
teens/early twenties in my odd little group of friends (mostly performers and writers) have had major career changes,
but we've at least spent time away from home and at most never had a
home for more than a little while. Combined, we have spent
substantial time in England, Switzerland, Paris, Nairobi, Jerusalem, Indonesia, Laos, besides coming
from all over the States. (I'm in the minority here, having only lived in Greenville and Wheaton. I'll give you that.)
None of us have been married. Heck, a lot of us have never even been in
a serious relationdateshipthing, but that can't be the only part of
human experience worth expressing through art. That having a significant other is the only way to be fulfilled in life is a myth older and deeper than Hollywood, but it is still a myth. It has to be.
We've never lost
children, but we've lost parents, grandparents and friends. Cancer, car wreck, suicide. They could happen to anyone, it seems, and quite frequently do. My 2007 journals are heavy and bulging with funeral programs.
And that doesn't even touch the world of joy and angst that is this one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
It's not like we haven't experienced anything. We have. Most of it just in the last year. Now we're just hoping to make it through 2008 without major tragedy.
So does that qualify any of us to write? To paint? To act? Or do we need to wait and amass another ten years of this craziness before we're worth listening to?
Can we at least make you laugh with us?
---
I'll just find a comfy spot and wait it out ...
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