An exciting day on Friday (also Saturday): I had no exam, but I woke up at 9:00 AM to practice "Killing Me Softly" with Resonance. I'd forgotten my part entirely, but I knew what I was doing by show time that night. The RM Coffeehouse started at 8:00, so we had our hands stamped and filed into the cafeteria. The room was set with twenty or so round tables, a wide gap for a stage, and a system of thin screens to mark off a backstage. All the good seats were taken, so Alison and I crouched in between two screens to catch the first act, the Shakespeare Club's production of A Winter's Tale. They were excellent, as always (especially Ben E. limboing and dancing!), although the play itself was the most bizarre and spastic thing ever. Ex: Queen Hermione feigns death and then pretends to be a statue for sixteen years, (as far as I could tell) for no particular reason. Whatev.


After Shakespeare, Lara sang and played keyboard, and there were a few other acts before Resonance. We were kind of shaky, we felt, but we earned compliments afterwards, and apparently Alison and I were audible this time! I must admit, I stopped paying attention to most of the acts after we finished, but I of course listened to Natalie D.'s composition and both of Alison's violin solos, which were amazing. I do understand wanting to devote your professional life to that, if you have such a talent - even if it's more competitive, more thankless. Resonance hovered "backstage" long after our performance, and then an amateur band struck up a fast song, and we begin to dance - just Alison and me to start, then a circle including Ranwa and Dena, then Seth and me.... It was thrilling and tiring and bodes well for us, as a group, having a blast at Prom this Friday. Then Ruchita blew soap bubbles at us, and we tried to catch them on our tongues; they taste vile, but we couldn't help ourselves. There's a lovely irrationality to group social events late at night.


After the Coffeehouse, Alison organized a trip to the Silver Diner. Seth and I bolted to his car, hoping to identify Hank's car as he drove away and fall in line behind him, poised to strike at red lights and administer the "love tap." We couldn't find Hank, but we did end up tailing Natalie and Alison. Knowing that Natalie is a fan of Strong Bad Email, I insisted, "We must hit her nine times!" Seth reluctantly acquiesced over the course of two or three red lights (I think he thought nine times was decadent). "Okay, now one more!" I said. "'I was saving that one for about two seconds ago!'" Seth said no. We reached the Silver Diner, and Natalie tiredly (half-heartedly, I hope?) expressed her annoyance at us. I eventually explained the Homestarrunner.com connection, and at that point she became more incensed.

"I am not Homestar!" said Natalie. "This stops here!" (She waved her arms emphatically.)

At the restaurant, we ordered voluminous milkshakes, two appetizers, and two bowls of strawberries. The strawberries had already become legend and metaphor after Hank and Alison ate them very suggestively one night during the Hello, Dolly! run. Incidentally, I took part in the inception of this behavior, when Alison and I had a sexy bean sprout eating contest once at Pho 95 (repeated two times afterward, with Seth and in the chorus room at school). Alison and Hank both demonstrated on the strawberries; then Dena participated, as well, with surprising success (grin). Natalie and Vanessa both refused; I tried once. Seth asked to take a turn and, remembering his uninhibited treatment of the bean sprouts, I admitted, "I'm scared to watch this!" (Everyone laughed.) Eventually, the strawberries were consumed, and our socializing degraded into a spitball war between Seth and George, during which Seth broke a mug. As we paid our check abashedly, another RM contingent (Natalie G., Deb, Nick S., and others) pegged sugar packets at us. We left with as much dignity as we could muster.


On Saturday, I watched The Matrix Reloaded at 9:30 PM at Regal. Downtown Rockville was dark, crowded, and cold, and I was sleepy. The movie itself was more "juvenile" (my friends and I concluded) than its predecessor: no particular integration of Philosophy 101 and killing bad guys, meandering action sequences, dirty jokes and silly self-reference, violence that was less stylized and more gratuitous (and there was a bizarre sex scene!). But it could have been much worse, and I certainly enjoyed aspects of it, including, as everyone points out, the score and the last twenty minutes or so of plot. Anyway, it's always fun to see my friends after curfew without getting punished.

They (the same folks who reviewed Josh, the Nicks, Deb, and others) reviewed me. Overall they were very nice and positive, as nice as I could have reasonably hoped. I know I've felt somewhat hostile towards my blog in the last almost-year; sometimes I didn't know why I kept it, except as a vehicle for me to aggressively not communicate anything. (Oh, but what's to communicate anyway? I've enjoyed school a lot this year, and sometimes I try to explain that - but it's enthusiasm, not insight. As for touchy-feely stuff, people want to read about that even less than I want to write it.)


Sandy and I had a conversation recently, on the way to Law Day; she prefaced it by saying we always have such interesting conversations when she drives me places, so I felt put on the spot. We joked for a while about English journals and how I felt so much more articulate now that we were writing on Woolf (with the ebullient prose) and not Hemingway (with the stuttering = insinuations of Greater Meaning). I unconsciously mimic the style of whatever author I'm writing on, which meant I got caught up in the inadequacy of language a lot before I discovered Woolf's glittering indifference to its limitations.


Sandy (or maybe I) suggested that my changeable English journal style might be a form of indirect commentary, exploring something about narrative technique through emulation. I (or maybe Sandy) said we'd seen Mrs. Barrett do the same thing, phrasing her comments in class in homage to Woolf. We both believed, though this is hardly unique to us, that the sound of words in order could stir a reaction beyond the sum of the words' meaning - that this is how we communicate, evoking something half-perceived rather than saying precisely what we mean.


With regard to my blog (this is the last thing I want to say about it), I try to construct phrases to cohere with the way I think, so that they'll seem familiar in retrospect. It's silly, I know, but it makes the task of narrating adventures, when I have them, more amusing for me; I like the juxtaposition of literary pretension and dumb teenage life-things (the "love tap"! driving into oncoming traffic! blowing off studying! lying in the middle of the road!). If I manage to articulate some sense of self by proxy, all the better; if not, at least I have a record of all the spectacular and inane things we did our senior year of high school.

Why haven't I blogged for almost three weeks? Well (and here I'm making an effort not to be cryptic): I felt too uncertain to write. Even simply listing events, I thought, would commit me to a particular interpretation of them, and it seemed nothing I thought or felt would endure in truthfulness for long enough to post. My explanation is, as it was before, that this is a rough time psychologically. We have one foot out the door, an expansive sweep of free-time-punctuated-with-exams for the next few weeks, maybe a burgeoning awareness that we don't have to work so damn hard to achieve a comparable amount.... I feel lazy and guilty and lucky and anxious (grin). I have no exams tomorrow and two on Friday, and I haven't really studied yet.


Meanwhile, I've been attending fun events, including the Hello, Dolly! cast party, State Madrigals Festival, Law Day, and a fake senior banquet (a strange self-congratulatory thing, hosted by my friends and designed to allow only us to win senior superlatives). The closing night festivities were notable in that I finally, at the last minute, developed a sense of membership to Hello, Dolly! I grasped, partly, what I'd lost by choosing newspaper and Mock Trial over drama for most of high school: that huge, quirky, noncompetitive community, united in effort and enthusiasm over a single worthwhile project.


In drama, there's a pre-show energy that hovers everywhere, productive and joyful, engaged in the creation of something.... I've felt it at Mock Trial, too, a sort of intellectual communion, but it falls flat in the face of inevitable competition. We depend on each other, yet we undermine each other; we pass mean, private notes in the margins of our case booklets. There's also an underlying sleaziness to any activity that feels, even for a minute, like just another bullet point on a college resume. Next year, if I can manage to get on the Penn Mock Trial Team, I'd like to develop a better balance between activities that make me feel good (drama, chorus) and activities where I have some degree of independent skill (anything with writing or editing, and maybe Mock Trial).


Anyway, the cast party: I wore the most provocative thing, by far, that I've ever worn in public. It was a halter-top. I felt uncomfortable and probably won't wear it again (grin). However, I did generally feel much more at ease than I'd expected, finding people everywhere, old friends and new, similarly sluttily attired and willing to chat or dance with me. The awards were surprisingly pleasant, too, albeit overlong, as I already knew the accompanying stories and could appreciate the silly, charming traditions of RM drama. For reference, I attended both the closing night show and the cast party for Damn Yankees last year, in spite of being only peripherally involved in make-up crew. I felt mostly out of place then, though I did talk to Seth for the first time in six months, which has worked out well for me so far.


After the official cast party broke up, we piled into three cars and headed for Dena's house. From the backseat of Hank's car, Seth and I boisterously encouraged Hank to give Dena the "love tap" as we pulled out of the driveway. To our delight, he did so, tapping the bumper of her car and motivating Ruchita to flick us off, various people to yell at us, and George to run out of Dena's car and throw himself onto Hank's windshield. We all had a good laugh about it and assumed the joke had run its course. We were proven wrong when Dena, at the head of the three-car caravan, led us in circles of labyrinthine neighborhood streets for twenty minutes, while the radio played Linkin Park and other unfortunate 2 AM selections in eerie counterpart. At Dena's house, Seth kept us up most of the night talking manic nonsense; then, at 5 AM, we tried to sleep, but I woke up abruptly several times by turning over into Seth's hair, which is prickly and scary if you are asleep.


The following Monday was Set Strike. I cheerfully caused more mess than I cleaned up, most notably by being an accessory to spray-painting the props room door. It now reads, outlined in electrical tape, "PROPS: EST. 70 BC 'AND NOT RENOVATED SINCE.' " I'm responsible for that quote (though not for electing to put it there), and I feel lovely about leaving my mark for future props crews, at least until they tear down our crumbling old high school. I also painted my hands and left green handprints along the props room walls, signing my name below as a testament to possession of probably the smallest full-grown hands RM drama will ever see. Mel, Heather, and I worked on our phony senior superlatives, and Ruchita and I painstakingly added our Ivy League colleges of choice to the huge Class of '03 banner outside the English hallway. Ack, if I were you, I would definitely not read a post as long as this, so I’ll start a separate post for the rest.