Read me Bakowski

While we're in the business of posting pictures, I thought I might post one of the cover of one of my favourite books!

Peter Bakowski's "In the human night" is one of the best reads the poetic soul will ever experience. It's comparable to music, or friendship, or flying. So beautiful, so heart-tugging, so captivating.

When I say captivating, I mean Bukowski's words capture the reader and lock him/her away in the cage of language.

To me, this book is what written poetry is. A world of words. A world of images. A world of beauty, and a world of pain that's so eloquently described that it seems beautiful, too.

I notice myself breathing and blinking when I read a poem from this book.

Feet of fantasy

I 'made' these shoes a while back and I thought I'd make a little photo board of them. Check it out. Click to enlarge.

Stark Raven madness

Ohhhh, so much to tell you, my precious blog!

I've been asked to perform at Gala again! Yay! Hopefully Dulce Et Decorum Est. I was gonna do Young Entertainers but changed my mind at the last minute because I was stressed out and unprepared. That's what you get for writing it the night before it's supposed to be on. It'll be a good skit once I learn it properly. Maybe I'll get a chance to do it another time. It's about repetition. It's about repetition. Anyway, they rang me about Gala on Friday night. It's on next weekend. The night before the Festival. Great. Another busy weekend. Such is the actor's life.

On Tuesday, on the way into my BRECCY meeting, I ran into the lovely Lee McLachlan, who asked me if I'd be able to perform a monologue at Stark Raven's 10th birthday party on Saturday night. Of course, I said yes! I picked up the monologue on Wednesday and learnt it over the next few days, and pulled it off really well on Saturday night. I had such a great time! So many theatre people were there and everyone was talking theatre! It was so nice to catch up with everyone and even meet some new people. Andy came down for it, and we had a good chat. He was really encouraging about getting youth theatre going down here, and said to get in touch with him if I wanted to run ideas past him or needed help with getting it going in terms of funding etc. It's awesome to have his support.

On Friday night, the night before the party, I had a rehearsal with Lee, but I'd had a long day, wasn't quite ready, and had just pulled out of the Eisteddfod, so I wasn't feeling too well. I had a panic attack for the first time in ages. I felt this enormous (irrational) sensation of absolute dread, and ended up coming off after doing only the last line of my scene and collapsing in a fast-breathing huddle, fumbling through my bag for my rescue remedy. Thankfully, my understanding friend Dave was there to rescue me, and he took me for a walk and helped me clear my head, then he suggested ice cream, so we had a sundae and all was well.

Right now I'm just very busy. How I have time to write this, I don't know! Probably because I'm procrastinating!

I know meter. Trochaic, Dactylic, Iambic, Anapaestic!

And I know what a split infinitive is. It's time "to happily leave" this blog.

Calendar

Just posting the link to my new calendar.

http://freecal.brownbearsw.com/katescalendar

Not sure if it's gonna work for me yet, but we shall see.

Ready to crash

I think I've reached the breaking point. I haven't broken down yet, but I can feel it coming.

Eisteddfod is over (the hard part, anyway). I got 3 firsts, 2 seconds and 3 thirds out of 9 items. Two of the firsts were for speech and drama: my recitation and monologue. I scored 95 for both! I've never had a score that good before!

Recitation of Dulce Et Decorum Est (Wilfred Owen) went extremely well. Only made one mistake - said 'walk' instead of 'pace', but managed to let it go and finish the poem well! Go me :)

I thought my monologue (from Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops To Conquer) was quite average, but the adjudicator liked it. I was against Tara (who is one of those performers who gets really nervous but then steps onto the stage and does wonderfully) and I thought her monologue was brilliant - delivered with such conviction and beauty - and, if I'd been judging, she would've beaten me!

My students did fantastically well! 2 firsts, 4 thirds and a highly commended (I think, but don't quote me on that until I get copies of their adjudication sheets!) The Dardy kids did wonderfully, too. Their play (from my script!) was just great! I think they got ninety-something for it :) Ahh, my babies! I was so impressed.

Let's not talk about my singing. LOL. Some of it was good-ish. Some of it was extremely average! Ooohh, let's just not even go there! But I do thank my gorgeous friends for the amazing and humbling support they showed by sitting through a lot of long adjudication pauses between acts just to see me and cheer me on. I really think that I have the most beautiful bunch of close friends I could ask for.

And of course, my family. Gran and Grandad came down, Meg doted on me (and my students), Jan supported me as always, Lee played piano for me!, Mum and Dad (my two favourite people on the planet) were there.

And my sister Sam (my biggest fan) made it to see contemporary night which meant the world to me and more.

Finally, thanks to Bec, my lovely accompaniest, for all her hard work and for managing to still be lovely even though she's sooo busy she probably doesn't have time to look sideways at a fencepost.

Saw The Vasco Era at the Prince after the Eisteddfod. They were awesome! I still can't hear properly! I actually 'danced' (or whatever you call it in a pub) and it wore me out! The drummer was one of the most talented creatures I have ever, ever seen/heard. He must have the strongest arm muscles in the world to be able to play that fast for that long. How does he even breathe when he's doing that?!

So I'm ready to crash. But I know there are Arms to catch me.

A fellow INFP

In case you weren't tuned in back when I wrote this post, I have a thing for the MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) and its 16 personality types. Until recently, other than Jon Doust, I'd never met anyone else who knew much about it.

I randomly ran into Dave in Henry's the other day and we ended up talking for many hours. Somehow we got onto the MBTI types and we analysed and analysed and analysed... it was fantastic! The amazing thing is that we're the same type; he's an INFP, too. So it makes sense that we have a lot in common and a lot to talk about. We both write. We both love grammar and hate bad grammar. We talked about freinds vs strangers as confidantes, and how some things IFs do may seem like T things in terms of organising our thoughts, but it's actually just the way we slot things into our worldview and values systems; it's not logical organisation like a Thinker, it's a necessary sort of categorisation that we INFPs use to understand our world from our inward viewpoint.

It was so cool to have someone to talk to in-depth about the types, especially someone of the same type as me! I don't think I know many INFPs (although I'm not entirely sure). Thanks for the convo, Dave. Twas fabtaztik.

The great gutter

Ma buddy Keaton (pictured) and I made an ice-cream gutter (pictured) at the J&H after party to celebrate the fact that I could have milk products again after a month off (to keep my voice clear for the show). It was complete with wafers, marshmallows, banana, chocolate sauce and nuts. It was so exciting (and tasty)!

I absolutely recommend this as a party food to share with friends or strangers. Everyone loves a sundae (especially if it's a metre or so long)!

Cheers to Karen, Talynt and Nathan for hosting the party. It was swell!

And thanks to Keatz for his contribution to the glorious gutter of gluttony that we greedily guzzled as we gabbled! It would've been no fun without a friend to share the gutter-preparing (and eating) experience. Isn't it great when friends spur you on to do things you really want to do? I was motivated enough to get up early on a Saturday morning and go pipe shopping! Oh, and thanks to the great guy at Total Eden who sawed the pipe in half, and to my brother, who worked out how to get it to stand up and not roll over! Ain't collaboration grand!

Tim Minchin

If you haven't seen and heard this song, check it out. It's deep and catchy. Two things I like in a song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da9VxaT8Gok