The NONE - A Review and Better Ideas

I'm going to try to avoid spoilers for The Nun for most of this, but (1) it was released almost a year ago and (2) as CorderyFX (hella spoilers in that video) points out, it spoils itself.

I enjoy writing in the same way I enjoy crocheting.  I can do very basic little things, but I don't have a ton of time to devote to it, so I get occasional fits of zeal, do it for a few days, then abandon it for months or even years (have a look at my blog archive...)  I fershure ain't done any fiction or screenwriting and I don't pretend to know more about writing scripts than people who do so for a living.

I *also* enjoy the occasional scary movie, but I have certain tastes.  If horror movies are nachos, then the setting and characters are the chips, the central conflict is the cheese, and accessories like jumpscares and super detailed gore and violence are jalapenos.  "I want you to saw your leg off because it amuses me" or "I'm going to sew you and your friends together because I'm loco bonkers" do not cut it.  Those types of movies are flimsy chips and cheap "pasteurized processed cheese products" - I demand real tortillas and real cheese.  As for toppings...I like some sliced jalapenos on my nachos and I don't mind a few jumpscares or gory parts in my scary movies, but I'm not about to eat an entire plate of just jalapenos and I'm not going to sit through a film that relies on jumpscares or gore exclusively for its' scare factor.


I watched The Conjuring about a year and a half ago and I quite liked it.  Because I hadn't seen The Conjuring 2 or the Annabelle spinoffs, I hadn't seen Valak as depicted/foreshadowed in the other films.  My first encounter with The Nun's marketing came from a YouTube ad that said, "Original ads for The Nun were actually pulled for being too scary, so this painting is all we can show you..."

Girl did you fall from heaven...because I'm pretty sure you're Lucifer.

It was a midroll and I wasn't watching a horror-themed YouTube video, so to have that suddenly staring at me with the creepy voice-over and scary encroaching violins was effective.  I was both repulsed and fascinated.  I'm a little iffy with movies that have Christian content, and with the trailers for The Nun, it was kind of hard to tell how far it veered into Hollywood possession versus genuine possession.  And of course, although I'm less susceptible to scary imagery than I was as a kid, I'm not immune to nightmares or to suddenly visualizing The Nun, The Babadook, or the knife-wielding aggressor from Hush in the shadows as I get up at 2 AM to pee.  

This past spring break, I finally got the guts to do it, figuring that if I got super freaked out, it was ok to stay up all night watching cartoons with the lights on because I was off work all week.  So I watched The Nun at midnight.  A midnight viewing of the alleged "darkest chapter of the Conjuring universe" for which I paid seven American dollars that I will never get back.  Not only did I not get scared...I actually laughed at things that were supposed to frighten me.  Upcoming plot points were so obvious and formulaic that I took to yelling them out and making tiny bets with myself, winning each one.  If we return to my nacho analogy, that movie is like half a burnt chip, unmelted store brand American cheese slices and three jalapenos that have wrinkled with age and neglect.  It is garbage trash and I'll only watch it again if Rifftrax comes along with me.

So here, after a far-too-long introduction, are my story ideas that could have been used for The Nun.  I ain't a writer, I ain't a movie maker, and these ideas ain't original.  But they're (1) equally unoriginal as the real plot of The Nun and (2) WAY MORE ENTERTAINING.  They're also pretty much all abuse-driven, because I can't think of a reason an entity would want to do horror movie things except that hurt people hurt people.

 Better Plots for The Nun

(taking for granted that The Nun is a disguise for or is possessed by Valak, per Conjuring 2)

1. Childhood Horror - the nun was a normal little girl raised by an abusive authority figure whose torture ramps her people-pleasing skills to eleven.  She works harder and harder for approval and denies and suppresses her rage until eventually she snaps, killing the authority figure.  In this raw and vulnerable state, Valak overtakes her and uses her outward appearance as a nice Catholic girl/nun to seek out those who could be similarly victimized (like Irene) and "rescue" them by possessing/empowering them to destroy their abusers.  Irene has to protect her acquaintances from being identified as aggressors and targeted, and herself from being overtaken like the original nun, while also seeking to save the nun's soul from Valak.  The abusive-parent inciting incident is thoroughly trodden in scary movies, but at least it's a plot (cough cough).
2. More Straightforward Possession - the nun was just a nun with a less glaring vulnerability, like a vice she had prior to taking her vows, that Valak uses to possess her.  Valak just happens to be the biggest, baddest demon of them all, leaving in his possession history a line of destruction, depravity and general horror.  Basically The Exorcist with a dash of Oculus.  Irene's status as a novice can be taken to mean she's not really sure about her spiritual status, giving her that weak-but-strong underdog appeal to counteract Valak's strong-just-strong-all-strong.  While we're stealing from other movies, this movie would also need to borrow from the Scream trilogy the death of a major character or bankable actor to sell this one.
3. Social Commentary - like Childhood Horror, except in this version the nun is abused or assaulted from within the church or abbey by someone in power, so she actively seeks out Valak to exact revenge.  This would make Father Forgot-His-Name a target because CHURCH BADDDD and Irene ambiguous because she's a novice...she might take her vows and become Valak's enemy, or she might recant and be "rescued."  Irene's task becomes digging the original nun out from under Valak's shadow and showing her to heal, to react to her abuse proactively rather than destructively, etc. and perhaps also to expose and drive out the nun's abusers.  Again, critical theory premises are old hat in horror, but a plot is a plot.
4. Surprise Bad Guy, Version 1 - Valak was originally just a human and subordinate to the nun in some way, like a student in a school she taught at, and the nun was the abuser.  Valak dies as result of the nun's abuse or neglect and returns to Earth to possess her and cause her to do all kinds of overt sinning so that she feels the shame and anger that he was made to feel.  Irene and Father Forgettable have to (1) suss out that origin story, (2) separate Valak and the nun and (3) save them both from each other and themselves.  M. Night Shyamalan, eat your heart out.
5. Surprise Bad Guy, Version 2 - The Nun is a decoy, an illusion meant to distract the Vatican while the real Valak slips in via...IRENE!  Irene performs "exorcisms" which are actually "transfers" to stronger/more influential persons.  This would also provide an opportunity to connect the Farmiga sisters, because you know who else knows a lot about spirits and demons and is called upon to expel them all the time?  Lorraine.  Irene is suspected by the church and "disappears"...but in fact becomes Lorraine and continues her activities under different auspices in another country.  A story at least as old as Carmilla, but it's not fixing that which isn't broken.

Those are all I can think of at the moment.  Basically (here come the spoilers) I want either the Nun, Valak or both to actually *be somebody* and *have motivation.*  I want there to be real stakes, real danger, real harm.  "We all died because we were afraid of seeing Scary Lady in the mirror" is weak sauce.  "We all died because this thing either possessed our friend and had her kill us or possessed us and made us kill ourselves" is a non-vegetarian The Happening and still way better than The Nun. 

Miss me, ladies?

 

Anybody Can Be Genie

Every now and then, I write posts about movies.

I don't watch a ton of movies - I tend to have very narrow and difficult-to-define preferences when it comes to entertainment.  I hate "wacky misunderstandings", but I love verbal non sequiturs.  I love some of the current pop/rock musicals like Heathers and Legally Blonde, but I hate when the music seems clumsily written (lookin' at you, Fame) or is unnecessarily complicated as a means to show off how "deep" the composer is (lookin' at you, Sondheim.)  I love comedy that lives in good snappy dialogue rather than relying on funny visuals and I HATE romcoms.  Unless it's something that stays light and unserious like Family Guy or Monty Python, if a character behaves in a way I would not tolerate and this behavior isn't checked by other characters, or makes a choice I think is stupid beyond understanding, I can't stomach it.  That goes double for characters who mistreat others and it's forgiven because of sympathy or social convention - I can't watch the exploits of Sheldon Cooper or Emily Gilmore without yelling at everyone else to just drop these self-absorbed buttholes out of your lives.  Characters like that fill me with palpable rage and I am not entertained by that state of being.

Having said all of that...I'm a pretty reliable Disney fangirl when it comes to their movies up until about 1998 or so.  The Disney Renaissance began when I was three and I am well aware that Disney is fully exploiting my age group's spending power with its remakes.  Listen: Walt was no dummy when he decided to use centuries-old sources, like fairy tales, folk tales and Shakespeare, as the basis for his films.  Those stories lasted because they're good - let's don't fix what isn't broken.  The source material for Aladdin comes from a later edition of Arabian Nights (One Thousand and One Nights in Arabic) - it wasn't in the first version, but was added later by European editors based on a story by Syrian storyteller Hanna Diyab1.  There are published translations on the market now that make various attempts to both honor the original language and make the stories comprehensible to English speakers unfamiliar with Middle Eastern culture, but the stories themselves and several of their early English translations are in the public domain and can be freely sought and read online.

Point Is!  I'm probably going to like Disney stuff from that era, either in its 90s or remake form, because the storytelling is solid.  Yesterday, I saw the live-action remake of Aladdin and I have thoughts...

***THERE ARE FINNA BE SPOILERS.  If you're familiar with the 1992 Aladdin, that goes double for you - there are differences!  And I'm going to spoil them!***

I've missed a few of the Disney live-action remakes, largely the ones that are pre-Disney Renaissance (which is to say, pre-1989).  Cinderella, Pete's Dragon and The Jungle Book all got revamped, but I feel like I didn't see much promo for them and, although I like the originals, none is my first choice for a rewatch.

But then they went after Beauty and the Beast.  Which I completely adored and which, for me, set the standard when it came to seeing Aladdin.  With Beauty and the Beast, they took everything about the animated version and cranked it up to 11.  Belle's intellect and pluck, Maurice's mechanical giftedness, Gaston's chauvinism, more ornate settings, more detailed costuming, a bigger and thicker orchestration...  For us late 80s/early 90s aspiring Disney princesses, it was a rosé fever dream, a box of chocolates beside a bubble bath, a dance around your living room with your tiny feet shoved into the toes of Mom's high heels.  And of course, Disney took the opportunity to course-correct on a few things.  The origin of the servants and their lost connection to the village was explained more clearly, the Belle/Beast relationship was distilled in an attempt to make it less illogical (however unsuccessfully), and of course there was that one moment when a dude danced with another dude and people who had no problem with a girl falling in love with someone who literally imprisoned her were convinced that the world would end and I WONDER IF THOSE THINGS ARE RELATED IN ANY WAY...

...sorry, another topic for another time.  So going into Aladdin, I was curious about whether they would use a similar approach.  Where for Beauty I was excited about every element, with Aladdin I was mostly excited about the music.  I tend to love everything Alan Menken does (which, incidentally, includes the scores for Beauty, Aladdin and Hunchback, among many fantastic others) and I was ready to (1) sing along and (2) be delightfully surprised when my singing along didn't line up because lyrics or music were updated.  I was ready to see a retread of the original plot with more detail, more magic, more volume.

I was right and wrong and I loved it.

About 90% of the plot is faithful to the 1992 version.  However, in addition to small updates, like Iago speaking in short phrases like a real bird rather than carrying on conversations (no recreation of the Gilbert Gottfried performance) or the cutting-out of Jasmine's introduction and escape (she and Aladdin are introduced in medias res at the end of "Arabian Nights"), there's one major difference that clearly says "This is a 2019 Reboot!" and it's Jasmine.

She's still the princess and she's still under pressure to get married.  However, where in the 1992 version she had to be married to a prince by a certain age and she resisted out of wanting to marry for love, in the 2019 version she has to marry a prince because only a royal male can be Sultan and her father is getting on in years.  She resists because she believes she is more qualified to rule her own people than some rando from another country.  There's a tangentially related subplot involving Jafar's plans to invade a neighboring country and using fearmongering to convince the Sultan to do so COUGH COUGH WAT.  This beefing up of Jasmine's character and motives is reflected both in her dialogue, which paints her as witty, intelligent and compassionate, and in her music - she gets her own song called "Speechless" which is reprised a few times.  I will admit that, although I like "Speechless," I'm not sure it's on the same level as the other songs.  This is probably because I'm a nostalgia addict and am resisting the change and also because this was one of a few new tunes using Broadway lyricists du jour Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.  They ok, but they ain't Howard Ashman or Tim Rice.

Since we're on music!  The delightful thing about the new Aladdin score and soundtrack is that, for me, it is just the right amount of new.  Like Beauty, the original instrumentation and motives are still present; if you're a megafan of the original and hear songs like "One Jump Ahead" or "Friend Like Me" from the new one in isolation, you will recognize them before the actors begin singing.  Unlike Beauty, there are new layers added musically.  Continuing in the vein of correcting past insensitive content, the new Aladdin adds to the original orchestration several Middle Eastern instruments and rhythmic figures that are more authentic to the setting.  And of course, there's a thread of hip-hop percussion throughout, because Will Smith.  It's essentially like going from just deep-fried turkey, which is delicious on its own, to having that deep-fried turkey in a sandwich with all the trimmings you like.  I used to wear out "Prince Ali" because I loved every element - the tempo was fun and danceable, the melody was catchy, the harmony and chord progressions were smooth and engaging, and the instrumentation was thrilling.  The new "Prince Ali" still has all of those things, down to the individual string and brass motives that punctuated the vocals, but a thicker percussion section, a dash of electronic manipulation and a more robust ensemble sound make it even better.

So I liked almost all of what I heard.  Similarly, I liked almost all of what I saw.  Look, I like CGI as much as the next person, and for a character like Genie, we are willing to suspend our analytical/realistic eye in the name of magic...but Abu bothered me.  Why throw out all of Iago's original lines in the service of giving him a few pithy sentences as a real bird, but turn the dialogue-free Abu into a CGI caricature?  Don't tell me it's so we can see him "emote" - the live, trained spider monkey for Ace Ventura did just fine, thank you very much.  Don't tell me it's for Frank Welker's benefit - he could just as easily voice over a live monkey.  And definitely don't tell me that it's to show off Disney's CGI prowess - the resurrection of Peter Cushing for Rogue One was for sure a head-tilter, but it was a far sight more believable than Abu.  He looked good if we're looking at the grand scheme of everything ever animated on a computer, but he did not look 2019-major-production good.

I also took issue with Will Smith's singing.  Don't get me wrong - he can match pitch and either he or his musical director had the good sense to switch him to rapping or urbane sprechstimme when the notes fell outside his range, but next to Jasmine and Aladdin's big voices, he was clearly the weak link.  It is worth noting that Hot Jafar was not given his "Prince Ali" reprise, which gave me a tiny sad because it's one of my favorite songs from the original.  I get wanting a more authentic Jafar and not wanting to put Jonathan Freeman in JafarFace again (he voiced the 1992 film *and* played him in the Broadway adaptation with some, um, interesting makeup choices), but we really couldn't find a Jafar who was Middle Eastern, hot and vocally talented?  I bet he exists.  I bet lots of hes exist.

So Will might not be much of a singer, but he is a great actor and he exemplified something that I think is pretty cool about the Aladdin property as rendered by Disney: the malleability of the Genie character.  "Duh," I hear you say, "a character that can do actual magic is pretty easy to change."  But I think it's deeper than that.  You can see many varied performances of this character and it is still clearly the Disney Genie.  Part of that comes from Robin Williams' original performance - Williams was a master of impersonation and this gave the original Genie a broadness of personality.  They literally animated multiple Genies onscreen to keep up with Williams' frenetic rate of change, meaning that just about any take on the Genie is faithful to at least one of his iterations.  The other part of this, I think, manifests as expressions of respect for Williams' performance by not copying it directly (in the case of Broadway, as he was still alive when it opened) and by paying light homage while still leaving the core of Williams' Genie to the man himself (in the case of the 2019 film, released 5 years after his untimely death.)  Broadway Genie, James Monroe Iglehart, has a more jazz/scat approach to the Genie than his other portrayers because he excels at that style - it's Iglehart at his jauntiest, which is what you need for the Genie.  Will Smith's Genie is effervescently cool and sardonic.  All three have a lot of the same lines and sing the same songs, but each approaches it with his own strengths.  Iglehart and Smith tend to divide speaking and singing similarly to Williams in the musical portions and have similar asides in pieces like "Prince Ali", but the specific pop culture references Williams used, his inflections, his accents...are all respectfully and reverently left alone as Iglehart and Smith explore their own versions of Genie.  In this way, I think Genie is a lot like Leading Player from Pippin.  Ben Vereen played it so dynamically that it made space for literally anyone, any race, any gender to take up the mantle and be themselves while still clearly being Leading Player.  Conversely, although a character like Jasmine can be deepened and broadened as she was for this movie, certain elements are always going to be there.  She will always be youthful, Middle Eastern, conventionally attractive, a soprano...

I guess, in an infantile way, that's been a big draw for me with Aladdin.  Only some girls can be Disney Princesses...but anybody can be a Genie.

1 Wikipedia articles for Arabian Nights and Aladdin

Antisocial

I *hate* when people sanctimoniously announce on social media that they're taking a break from social media.  Every time I see such a status, I think, "Just be gone.  Whom do you think is looking for you that often?"

And then I became that person.  Happy Lent and Easter, everyone!

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision.  For Lent 2018, the idea for what I wanted to abstain from (grown up beverages) had been bubbling in my head for about a month.  This year, nothing was standing out super clearly.  On Ash Wednesday, I said as much to a friend, and then as I walked back to my car, suddenly "SOCIAL MEDIA" popped into my brain.  The more I thought about it, the more attractive the idea became.

1. It was the beginning of competition/evaluation season and reading all of the posts and posting my own, however well-intentioned, ignites a base, ugly part of my psyche that wants to compare, critique and basically beat myself and everybody else up.

2. Even at my most voracious, I don't so much jones for social media as meander to it out of habit.  I would rather my idle time be spent on something more enjoyable (looking at Sports Night gifs on Tumblr) or educational (reading about history or news).

3. Let's be really real: although we love our friends and family and we are grateful for a wide variety of viewpoints and celebrate differences, Facebook is notorious for burying the more nuanced viewpoints and putting the vapid fringe flotsam right in your face so that you'll post more, read more, argue more and generally be on Facebook more.

So I quit for Lent.  Here's how my 3 points of attractiveness turned out.

1. I was *way more relaxed* during competition/evaluation season.  Subsequently, I projected a much healthier "let's do our best" vibe rather than my usual "let's be THE best" fueled by seeing everyone else's scores online.  It was also much easier to compartmentalize work and leisure time.  I already had a pretty strict rule about not looking at work email when I'm not at work, but not looking at Facebook (and therefore not being reminded of work) made my evenings, workouts, movie nights with Andy, etc. far more relaxed and less distracted.

2. Obviously, there are those who would argue that my general addiction to my phone for entertainment is still a problem far exceeding any that Facebook posed.  Baby steps, people.  I have found, however, that when I do go to my phone or onto my computer, the thoughtless, unconscious wandering to Facebook was not replaced by something similarly habitual.  I would go to my phone because I was bored and pause for a moment, consciously choosing whether to play a game, read news, read a book on my Kindle app or watch The Great British Baking Show on Netflix.  The answer would change according to my mood...

3. ...Speaking of!  When I'm not regularly looking at inflammatory infographics, clickbait rants, vague complaints about "some people" or thinly-veiled humblebrags, my mood is far more stable.  When I was unhappy about something, I would talk to my friends or look up suggestions/testimonials rather than craft an attention-seeking post.  When something good happened, I savored it with people in my physical presence rather than worked on a post specifically intended to impress people.

My only moment of Facebook-related anxiety was actually today, when it hit me as I put on my makeup that "Lent has ended - I can get on social media again."  I was afraid I'd log in and find a ton of angry people on the other side of unanswered messages and ignored event invitations.

NOPE.  The fact is, I'm just not that important.  I don't mean that in a sad-sack give-me-compliments way.  Rather, I have learned that my overdeveloped sense of duty doesn't apply to social media.  Anyone who *really* needs to get in touch with me either has my phone number or can find my contact information (for work, at least) online.  No one is all that interested in my life, and the minute details of other people's lives are none of my business, even if they're being posted on FB.  If I need to know it, someone's gonna tell me eventually.

You can probably see where this is going: I'm deleting my Facebook.  If there's a really fly meme going around, somebody text it to me.

EDIT: It latterly occurs to me that some of this sounds like I'm talking about all the ways other people do Facebook poorly.  That's not what I meant - when I say things like "attention-seeking" or "impress people", I'm talking openly and specifically about how *I* used Facebook, not about anybody else :D

Experience

There's some joke somewhere that I can't be bothered to look up that says, "Experience is the thing you don't get until just after you need it."  Haha, yes, true when it's the first time you're dealing with a thing.  I would submit, however, that you continue to need it after you've got it, you just don't feel that need as sharply because, hey, that particular socket wrench is right there in your mental tool box!

When Andrew was getting open heart surgery and was stuck in ICU, I cried for hours the first time he went into afib.  The eighth time, I shrugged.  I had heard it enough to understand that it wasn't an immediate death sentence - I had the mental tool for that job.

The first time a student defied my instructions, I froze.  I genuinely felt like my insides were made of ice.  I didn't want to abandon the other 28 in order to go write up this one and I was afraid to call out the child in front of everyone.  Why I was so afraid of saying "stop that" to a teen's face, I can't quite tell you.  Anyway, now it's no big deal...and, hilariously, because it's no big deal, it rarely ever happens.

The first time I heard that a leader I loved and admired was leaving (my first 8th grade chorus teacher), I despaired and worried that the organization would fall apart and dissolve and we would all be left to falter.  That organization, by the way, is now a state-renowned, award-winning choral department with an amazing teacher who we might never have met had that first teacher never needed to leave.

Eight years ago, I wrote a post called "Our Hope Endures" in which I quoted the lyrics to the eponymous Natalie Grant song.  I listed a few things that had been happening, much of which I don't even remember, that were causing me stress.  What I left out, however, was the event that actually inspired the post - the painful and unexpected departure of a loved and admired leader.  Although I had seen such a thing happen (hello, 8th grade chorus Ashley!  Go practice piano, please!), this was different because I was this leader's second-in-command and would have to take on some of their responsibilities.  It was frightening, overwhelming and exhausting, and I know whatever little inconveniences I suffered were nothing compared to what the departing leader had to deal with.  However, in the long term, many wonderful things happened and wonderful people stepped into roles they otherwise would not have.  I'm not saying I'm glad it happened; I hesitated even to allude to this event because I don't want to cause anyone who was connected even a moment's unhappiness in being reminded of it.  BUT - we can all now point to new friends, new growth, new opportunities that happened in the wake of it.  It sucks that people had to suffer, but I think it's ok to acknowledge that out of suffering came blessings that we couldn't have foreseen or even thought to ask for at the time.

Experience is the thing you get just after you need it.  It is also the thing that gives you a new socket wrench in your brain to fix things with.  A wise man once told me to "recycle your pain", by which he meant to reflect on things that have gone wrong for you and that you have caused to go wrong and use that knowledge to minister to others in those same places.  The fruit baskets will be overturned, surgeries will have complications, teenagers will be defiant, people we love will stumble.  We know the road map: we hurt, we guard, we rally.  And again, lest it be misconstrued that I am happy when things go wrong - believe me, I am the first to be like SOMETHING IS CHANGING RED ALERT LET'S ALL GO DIE - I'm not saying I'm glad that these things happen.  I'm also not trying to minimize or overlook the initial emotions that come whenever upheaval happens.  But because of experience, I know that I can also expect new things in the future.  The forest burns, then the rain falls and new little green plants spring up.  I take no pleasure in the fire, but I also no longer fear it because I know the rains are coming.   

The Gigs

(aka break time Pomodoros)

My last post was a year ago...

My last YouTube video was a year and a half ago...

*    *    *    *

If you had told baby undergraduate Ashley that she would someday, in addition to her dream job of teaching Chorus, also be coteaching Band and Musical Theatre and also teaching a Theatre class to sixth graders while trying to finish a dissertation, she would have laughed at you and asked if Dr. J put you up to this to make her do her Orchestration homework.

Yep, those are all my gigs.  Let me break it down for you...

The Chorus Teacher

• Repertoire.  Kids are in chorus to sing chorus songs, so SING SONGS WE DO!
• Technique.  "Sopranos, when you listen to me model these parts, please don't copy my tone."
• Literacy.  We sight sing on the daily, but I also give arrangement projects and written music work to help them understand the abstractions better.  At least, that's what I tell myself when I spend my one metric eternity a week grading that written work.  Also, data, numbers, artifacts...these things make stakeholders happy.
• Logistics.  Our dresses arrived a week *after* the Fall Concert this year YAY AWESOME THANKS BRO.
• Enrichment.  "Hey, wanna learn this piano part so that I don't have to pay an accompanist you can get some more accompanying experience?"
• Scaffolding.  "We're going to do sectionals on this song until Jesus returns.  Godspeed."
• GMEA Stuff.  "You guys live an hour away, but you can totally be at my school by 4:00 for the second audition, right?"
• Saying Yes.  "Yes you have to sing today."  "Yes those really are your notes with all the leger lines on them."  "Yes I expect you to sing that high you JUST DID IN WARM UPS MANNNN"

The Assistant Band Director

• Clerical assistance.  "Just give me all your grades.  Just hand me a big stack of numbers."
• Scaffolding.  "One two three four one RATCHET three four one two TRIANGLE TRIANGLE"
• Accompanying.  "I can play like 80% of that kit part, so can I play it at the concert?"
• Super Helpful Feedback.  "...you gave them a visual in which they have to count to three 47 times?"
• Entitlement.  "Assistant Band Director coming through to claim her two free slices of pizza!"
• Saying No.  "No you may not go to the bathroom on the other side of the stadium by yourself."  "No I will not give you the scissors for 'something fun'."  "No that is not a line.  That is also not a line.  GEEZ LOUISE HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THAT THIS IS NOT A LINE???"

The Assistant Drama Teacher

• Teaching vocal notes.  "These are your parts."
• ...LOL JK NOPE.  "These are the parts you're going to sing because the ones these Broadway people wrote are ridiculous and also nothing like the cast recording."
• Clerical assistance.  "Just give me all your grades.  Infinite Campus and I are best friends."
• Occasional accompaniment.  "Enjoy this bassline because that's all you're getting with this Sondheim junk."
• Admonishing.  "Memorization doesn't happen by just wishing really hard."
• Waiting.  Waiting for everyone to show up to rehearsal, waiting for the technical director to help the kids find the right lighting cue, waiting for the performance tracks to finally upload through the school firewall.
• Saying Stop.  "Stop swaying."  "Stop singing melody, altos."  "Stop talking."  "Stop messing with the [insert funnest prop here]." 

The Middle School Teacher

• Theatre Games.  "GUYS.  It's not fun for the rest of us if you only pass the Zip Zap Shebang between the four of you!"
• Acting and Performing.  "If the words look normal and come after your character's name, it's your line.  If the words are all slanty like this, they're stage directions and they tell you what to do."
• Theatre Terminology. "Simon says walk downstage.  Simon says cross right.  Move to center AYOOOOOOOOO!"
• Generating a Script.  Which at this age breaks down thusly: 50% stories about broken bones, 30% stories about getting a pet, 10% everyday stories, 10% stories that will rip your heart out like "When I Got Adopted" or "When My Grandfather Died."
• Producing a Tiny Play.  "I appreciate the offer, but I think your dad might find it a little disproportionate to construct a homemade hand-carved oak desk for a group of 25 sixth graders to perform a 20-minute segment of My Fair Lady around."
• Saying Wow.  "Wow, your puppy is cute!"  "Wow, your shirt, shorts, socks and shoes are all the same shade of neon green!"  "Wow, the tooth you just pulled certainly did produce a lot of blood!"

The Doctoral Candidate

• Begging for Survey Responses.  No seriously guys, please fill out my survey.
• Trying to write up events that happened months ago while you were also trying to help band kids step their left foot on 1 and 3.
• Being asked when I'll be done.  "Well, my goal is [insert a year's time from when question is being asked.]
• Saying Sorry.  "Sorry it took me so long to finish this."  "Sorry it took me so long to email you back."  "Sorry this looks so terrible."

And then there's proctoring state tests, playing for church, exercising, attempting to be a decent friend and wife with varying degrees of success...

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That's why I haven't posted anything anywhere in forever.  And the honest truth is...I've never been happier in my life.  I am surrounded by wonderful people who inspire me and treat me with kindness.  If you had told baby undergraduate Ashley that her dream of just having that Bachelor's and teaching Chorus was not anywhere near big enough, I don't think she would have believed you.

Some days, I still don't believe it.

Confessions of an Early Shirley

Today, I fell down one of those topical rabbit holes that mobile internet has made it so easy to get into.  For some strange reason, I got to reading that rash of articles from a couple of years ago about chronically late people.  I'm not going to list every single thing I read - you can Google the topic and see it all.  There are happy pieces about habitually late people being optimistic and seeing the "big pictures" and not-so-happy pieces giving them very unkind labels.  There was a recurring theme among both types, however: allegedly, late people hate arriving early.  According to the pro-lateness articles, it's because showing up early and then having nothing to do but wait is inefficient.  According to the anti-lateness articles, it's because they're too self-conscious to face the prospect of waiting alone or having to make small talk.

Anyone who knows me personally, or has read my blog or watched my videos, knows I am the complete opposite.  I *love* showing up early.  This is why:

1. I Am Pessimistic

Everything is going to take longer than Google Maps says it will, or than my friends/family say it will, or than my own lived experience says it will.  If I give myself the exact 20 minutes it actually takes to drive to work, there will be a wreck on the way to work, or my tire will explode, or Cthulu will rise out of Lake Lanier and take out the bridge next to the Methodist church.  

2. I Struggle With Transitions

I cannot just walk in somewhere and get going.  I need to make sure I'm as ready as possible, which includes knowing the space and seeing faces as they arrive so I know exactly whom is around and what is happening.  I need time to mentally rehearse what is about to happen so I can plan for snappy comebacks or well-timed Napoleon Dynamite quotes.

3. I Am Introverted To A Fault

Getting to work or class early means I can start in on work.  I can get more done uninterrupted and the appearance of being hunched over a laptop or a task sends a socially-acceptable LEAVE ME ALONE message.  My ideal world is one in which I'm completely by myself about 75% of the time because...

4. I Am Selfish, Egotistical and Fragile (aka Getting Really Real)

Don't get me wrong - I have friends and family members that I very much enjoy talking to and spending time with.  But being around people, especially people who are close to me, means the possibility of doing something wrong and having it pointed out to me.  And of course, the world falls apart if I make a mistake.  Even when I'm alone, I deride myself endlessly if I do something like trip on level ground ("Thank GOD no one was around to see that, you miserable excuse for a human!")  So I prefer to be alone because then I don't have to worry about other voices joining that one.  As Elliot Reid once said in Scrubs, "I'm gonna tell them that I am the most perfect doctor ever who never needs anyone's help with anything!"  This is a goal both healthy and attainable.  Being early to everything supports this persona - "I am so together.  Be impressed with me."

So the next time your smug early friend posts one of those "OMG late ppl r so annoying!" articles on Facebook, link them to this post and be like, "Well, at least I have self-esteem!"

Refining My Process

So I presented chapters one and two to my committee here a while back and it was not good.  Crashed and burned.   Wiped out on the asphalt.  Belly flopped in front of the hot lifeguard.  Belched mid-solo.  Obviously I was disappointed - there's one year and lots of tuition money I'll never get back - but my major professor and I figured out a plan of action and I'm putting the finishing touches on my new literature review.

Right now this minute, I'm using an altered version of the Pomodoro Technique.  I have my outline and literature review open in one window and this blog post open in the other.  I work on my review for 15 minutes, then I come over here and write for fun for 15 minutes.  After a couple of hours, I take a longer break.  This technique is the first of several changes I made to my writing process once I got into graduate school...

1. Pomodoro Technique - I cannot marathon my way through something nonstop.  My brain needs to point itself elsewhere for a while.  To a point, Pomodoro helps me because 15 minutes is about as much time as I can spend writing before going dry, and then on the other side is about as long as I can goof off before I start wanting to change tasks.  After too long, though, I can't do either thing anymore and I have to go run or dance around or watch TV.

2. Source Comparison - I remember my embattled 11th grade literature teacher making us go through certain steps in writing our research papers.  Among these was an assignment to gather all of our sources on index cards, bibliographical information on one side, a brief summary of its contents or quotes we might wish to use on the other.  At the time, I thought it was the dumbest, most arbitrary thing ever.  I forgot about it once the class was over and didn't use it again...until I had to write my first lit review.  Instead of index cards, I use a table in MS Word.  Bibliographical information goes in one column, then the next is a summary of what it says and any quotes I see or relevant points I want to remember.  Doing this a reasonable amount of time before the paper is due makes it a million times easier to think of what to write, organize my thoughts, and cite my sources.  Dr. Kerley, you were right.  I'm sorry about that vocab test in which I refused to write the letter "e."

3. Idea Maps - Once I've gathered sources and given them time to simmer, I print out the aforementioned MS Word tables so I can spread them out and see them all.  I look for commonalities or categories, i.e. "Hey, these 10 writers all talked about difficulty-level bias," and start grouping the sources based on those emerging categories.  Then I take those categories and see if they can be grouped at all, whereupon I do a concept map.

Makeup sponge added to cover a little saltiness in my center bubble.

The actual writing is easier to do on a word processor, but these prewriting stages are easier to do by hand because I can freely use space, I can color-code just by grabbing a different pen...all of this helps my brain percolate and remember the thoughts so that when I sit down to write, I struggle a lot less for words.  7th grade Study Skills teacher Ms. Taylor, you were right.  I'm sorry about spending inordinate amounts of time drawing pretend mendhi on my arm when I was supposed to be outlining.

4. Writing with Sources - In undergrad, when I would write a draft, I would spit out the prose and just write [SOURCE] when I hit a spot where I knew I would require an in-text citation or [QUOTE] when I hit something that I knew I had read a quote about and wanted to come back later and write/cite it properly.  I did these things so that if I was on a roll, I could continue writing prose uninterrupted.  Sometimes whole paragraphs would be nothing but 

WRITE A GOOD CONCLUSION HERE

I would finish the draft, give it a day, then go back through and fill in the gaps.  I would have to go through and dig all those sources and articles back up for the in-text work, sift through them for the quotes, and look at them again for the "Works Cited" page (I was an MLA baby in undergrad).  Once I got into grad school and needed more and more sources, it finally dawned on me that this was so stupidly inefficient.  Also, because I was now writing on drier topics and tended to do more stylistic editing on-the-spot, my prose was no longer a big gush, but rather a steady trickle which would not suffer from the occasional interruption in order to complete the in-text citation and references listing.  So I finally learned to do that.  As soon as I allude to a source in my writing, I go to my printed-out table of references and spit out the in-text citation, then scroll down to the references list and add the full citation there.  I've also quit giving myself the HEY WRITE THIS PART LATER because...

5. The Death of the Length Requirement - In On Writing Well, Dr. Zinsser reminds us to say what we need to say and then shut up.  I had to read that book in high school and ended up really liking it (it beats Elements of Style on the readability scale by about eight zillion points), but I scoffed at that section because, "Dude, they give us minimum lengths in high school.  I don't get to shut up when I want to."  The same was true in undergrad; the English faculty even set down a rule my freshman year saying that if they got a paper that was under the required length, they wouldn't read it.  I imagine the intent was to push us to pick topics with sufficient meat to sustain 10-12 pages, or to pursue enough credible sources.  We did neither; we stretched like we were training for Cirque du Soleil.  We were redundant, verbose, and generally ridiculous.  The lingering fear of the Dread Runt Paper was part of why my first set of chapters failed so spectacularly.  But a glance at the dissertations in UGA's music library reveals the fact that when it comes to this kind of work, quality beats quantity by 1000%.  There were dissertations on a single piece of music that were thick enough to act as a booster seat for a short driver.  There were dissertations on whole populations that were skinny enough to fan myself with (including one titled "Female Band Teachers in the State of Georgia."  *snerk*)

For this round of chapters, I'm taking a new approach.  I'm not looking at page numbers, I'm not counting sources, and I'm not worrying about it being pretty.  I'm saying what I need to say, I'm putting in citations as I go, and then I am shutting up.  We'll see where that takes me.

I have now completed 9 Pomodoros of work, or 2.25 hours of writing.  I am writing this paragraph during my 9th Pomodoro of "rest."  After this, I'm going to take my big break and go run outside in the sunshine, then I'll return and do however many Pomodoros until it's done.  Pray for me.