I'm so angry, I don't think it'll ever pass

For your viewing pleasure, here is one of my application essays. While writing the first half, I felt cynical and ferocious--a feeling I quite enjoyed.





I seem to have been a late bloomer in some respects. Toward the beginning of senior year, when most of my fellow AP students had known EXACTLY where they wanted to go to college and EXACTLY what they wanted to be, I was just beginning to feel a shadow of an inkling that acting might be something that I wanted to pursue further. When November came around, I went through the motions of selecting and applying to half a dozen schools or so, but my heart wasn't in it. After many years of poor instruction, condescension, and unanswered questions about why-the-system-was-the-way-it-was, I was a volatile whirlwind of angsty, vengeful fury when it came to schooling. Most of my applications went unfinished and when springtime pranced into town, my mailbox was desolate for want of a single acceptance letter.

Faced with the age-old question of what in the world I was going to do with myself for the next little while, I decided to give credence to my shadow of an inkling and audition for the two-year acting conservatory at a local community college. What I discovered through attending this program was just how important I believe the arts are. In an age where most of the careers available to my peers and me are herding our already hectic and escapism-ridden society further toward our over-industrialized, sleep-deprived doom, I see the arts as a healing force. Instead of the typical concerns of achieving higher efficiency and dumping more responsibilities on workers, the arts are concerned with encouraging love and understanding, and figuring out how we can possibly survive in a lonely, frightening world.

One day I would love to create an arts school for young children that would chiefly focus on kindling their natural love for storytelling. With roots in traditions such as Commedia Dell'arte and Mime rather than contemporary realism, I would like the kids to understand how the imagination and sense of humor that is already a part of their daily lives can focus and expand into works of art. My choice to pursue a BFA despite my dissatisfaction with most of the schooling in our country has to do with my desire to--after my goals as a performer have been achieved or abandoned--teach. The degree is necessary to this end, and before I can solidify my theories about actor training, I need to explore the art of acting as fully as I possibly can.





Also, here's a sentence that I eventually decided to leave out:

I now have the drive to deal with the bureaucratic shitstorm that seems to be an all-but-inevitable part of organized education.

No I ain't hoed a row since I don't know when...

I need SAT dates for some applications, so I sifted through the Kevin file that my mom keeps in her desk. Among other gems which I may post bits of later, I found old piano newsletters. Mrs. Davis would do a newsletter every month including a feature article on one student. Some highlights from my feature:

"Kevin also had brief encounters with the violin and the saxophone, but piano won."

"He is always willing to perform and would probably play for the Queen of England if he had the chance."

"One of Kevin's 2001 claims to fame is that he broke two arms and a finger. Mrs. D can vouch that he can play the piano with a cast on. He was going to perform the Spinning Song with his finger in a cast, but he broke the cast."

But you did wear cowboy boots...

Sometimes I spend the wee hours poring (I just checked, that's the correct spelling in this case) over old blogs. I'm amazed by most people's ability to speak candidly about real life happenings. Irrational worries about what will be made of this and that lead me to speak in riddles and generalities about mostly insignificance.



Why do I think I have anything to hide? And if I don't want people to understand what I mean, why am I intent on releasing these things into cyberspace?





I look for clues in everything. The intent is to discreetly put together a complete picture of whichever mysterious someone, but my hyper-scrutiny finds puzzle pieces that may not exist, and the final portrait is obscured by flourishes of my own design.

WHAT

There's no way it's raining right now.

No... it is.


Somebody come dance with me! Quick!

Close your eyes and I'll kiss you, tomorrow I'll miss you...

Perhaps I would blog more often if I didn't feel the need to post complete paragraphs.
Let's give it a try:

With a definite not-too-distant return date, missing someone might be kind of nice.

Figure eight is double four...

I just got back from running figure eights in front of my house. I completed three and a half, then saw a car turning onto the other end of my street and sprinted back into the house.

"What the hell?" you ask.
I respond with a dismissive shrug.

Lately my mood bounces between woeful with longing for things I don't have, to giddy for things I've had and future possibilities. Sometimes these moods meet in the middle. And sometimes that makes me skip out the front door.


Warm summer nights are intoxicating. The feeling of welcome in the air harkens back to strangers with glowing frisbees and related ridiculocity. Where does it go?

Sometimes I am wild and untamable. Sometimes I am resigned and feeble.

I'm just a kid and life is a nightmare

Tonight I decided to relive my middle school years by watching all of Simple Plan's music videos in one sitting. I got to watch them evolve from their wild and reckless "GUYS WE ARE SO PUNK ROCK" days to their more mature "Guys, we're really eclectic and never said we were punk rock" days. Pierre's spiky hair flattened, David's eye makeup thickened, and the focus of the songwriting turned from heartbreak and ennui to issues like drunk driving and how crazy the world has turned.

Their more dramatic turns probably garnered critical praise, but I think there's something magical about whiny, spunky kids with guitars that is lost in the process. Listening to their angsty anthems gives the impression that their only real goal was to make music that would reach out to all the kids who feel lost, alone, confused, rejected.

Early adolescence sucks, and continues to get suckier. Expectations are rising, and nobody can really explain why. As much as us old fogeys (hah) may ridicule our younger selves, preteen listlessness is fully justified, and music can be a haven from all that. Simple Plan's songwriting ability may not be dazzling, but that is far outweighed by their dedication to making lonely kids feel less so.

And besides, we're babies ourselves. Who are we to judge?


In other news, "Angst," aside from being a word for nonspecific nervous feelings, is the name of a Romanian super-market chain.