Breaking Down Lear

This really made us think about Lear and having seen both versions of the Movie I could tell who had seen what clips and who had not seen anything from either. The one huge Idea that stuck with me was that Shakespeare had created a godless world. The world just seemed to end in desolation after Lear, Cordelia, Edmund, Goneril and Regan all died, leaving Albany to rule over a dead world. This world seems devoid of light and at this point I'm not sure how much of Lear is actually based on England, where it is said to be set.

When we set up what we were going to do I was extremely surprised at how smart the set up was. The sets were like streams of memories in the moments before death. I'm not sure what to think, I just know that I cannot wait to see the exacts of what we are going to do.

Reed and Editing

Yes. I love having my work ripped open like a ripe banana and peeled apart to get to the sweet center of what we are really looking for. Reed has a different style of editing than most people who I have come across in my life as a writer. No only is he careful about what he says, he does his best to preserve the work while getting the editee to learn what looks good and what does not so that the self-evaluation process happens along with the writing. Having us read aloud to our peers, each and every one of us, our unfinished product was something that felt good. No one had anything particularly much. Jared, Ashley and I were the only ones who had written and Jared had not brought his work in, but just the who discussion of my work in general really gave me more of a drive to get more done with my work. Ashley did happen to argue a lot with Reed over the point of view of her story. She wanted to break the fourth wall repeatedly with her character and was rather stubborn upon the idea despite Reed trying to explain that it turns the reader off because it distances them from the story and does not allow them to get caught up in the writing. I'm not saying she was wrong to argue her point, actually it was very informative because it got Reed to read something of his to show her the use of first person. There was a lot there, just hearing his writing explained so much about Reed as a person and I thought that I rather liked that. The fact that he was able to pour so much of himself into the small section that he showed us was really something that we could all learn from. For next week he wants 1,500 words. Hell will probably freeze over before I stop at 1,500. I really am loving this workshop. It really is starting to feel like more and more of a reward.

Let's unpack that

Working with Rob Gioia again was a wonderful experience especially because the material we are working with (King Lear) is something I have already plot and character wise deconstructed in my AP literature class. The work I think is going to be difficult because of trying to display the entity of King Lear in a 5 minute abstract performance. It going to be hard but is also going to be rewarding. It is a good group of people wooing together. It's people with experience, it's people who know what they ate doing and want to work with this material. We did a lot of working with the actual text of Lear, learning how to read it and interpret it in order to make it easier for us to work with the text. I'm excited tag this is going to culminate in a performance because it pushes us just that much harder than it would if we were just going to show it to STAC. Rob's grade depends on this so I think that makes us want to do more than do well, we want to get him the highest grade possible. I cannot wait to go back to this workshop.

Read Reed

The workshop yesterday could not have been better. I haven't been so excited to work with someone since Steve came in for the first workshop that I did last year. I think this will be something that is really going to help me in life because of the fact that I want to write novels, I've always dreamed of writing a novel and now that it is time go off into the world of people who do this for a living, I feel that my ideas are changing, my intentions for my characters are changing, and the stories I write are maturing before my eyes. From the moment he told us that we were going to be writing the first chapter of a novel I was beyond excited. This was my chance to really branch out like I had not had the opportunity to before. When I worked with Steve it was on play writing, with Mr. Semerdjian it had been more about poetry, I've yet to really work with someone who writes novels, full lens stories that I have been wanting to dive into. I couldn't care less that he doesn't write the exact genre I do, I know that it is probably a huge advantage that he doesn't and I feel that when I get further into the workshop my ideas are going to expand even more, adding to my repertoire of writing.

We were given the assignment to work towards the first chapter of a novel, and next week are to present him with an idea. I already have one. I am going to be writing from the criminal's point of view. I want to write a story about a team of hackers who stumble upon the coding for a missile guidance system and now the government (of which country I am not yet sure) is chasing after them. Each of them with go by only their hacker handles in order to dodge this chase. It feels to me more of the thriller side of the crime novel but that excites me, action, seeing as I am used to things being very steady and unmoving in my work with a lot of scenery I will need to adapt to fast dialogue. movement and cityscape environment that I feel will help me learn.

I've started typing at home and despite the fact that Reed has asked us for one chapter, I don't know if I will be able to stop at just one. I feel like I have a burst of creative energy and could use this one chapter to jump start a whole novel that may unfold itself in front of me. 10-15 pages in six weeks. That seems so little in grand scheme of things and I will probably wind up writing more than that. All I really know is that this is going to be probably the best workshop I have ever been in. I am confident from the start that this is going to be something that I will remember for a long time and will be a great advantage for me when I get to college. The only thing that I am sad about is that this is only going to last six weeks with only one day a week. Something like this I wish I could do for long periods of time each day. I don't think I have ever been this enthusiastic about workshops. I think that over the next six weeks I am going to do a lot of writing, and hopefully past that, all the way into college because I think that when I get to college if I can have continued writing from now until then on this one project I will be able to do something with it there and who knows, maybe I'll find a professor who will help me get it published. That is really what I have always wanted, to see the paperback copy of my own words with my name printed boldly below the title as if to say, "Hell Yeah I wrote this!"

It's a long arduous journey ahead of me but I think that working with Reed is one hell of a start to it. Thanks Luke, for this workshop. Thank you so much for putting me into it. I feel like all of the waiting for something like this and all of the writing I did last year has really paid off. This doesn't even feel like work. This feels like more of a reward. I cannot wait until Monday.

The Penultimate Playtime of GET THERE!

Wow, we feel like a band. It's actually amazing how quickly things come together. I still hate the fucking Journey song, but man do we have that crap together. We sound in sync with each other and we are looking at one another for cues and actually listening which took us much longer when we were trying to do Message of Love. The band is actually functioning as a whole and that is really exciting me, especially because we worked on a song that I can actually stand. We started learning Baba O'Reilly by The Who (whom I actually really like and kind of grew up with because of my uncles) which from the start sounded much better than we would have been just weeks before. There is a definite jump in the skill level from all of us. I'm associating the notes better, Bobby is actually sometimes tuning down and letting others take the lead when he has no idea what he is doing. Alex is really jumping on the drum beats and getting into it. I can stand there and watch his face light up when we speed up. Ellen is more confidant. The first few times when she was playing Sax no one could hear her, admittedly we have turned our volume down but man is that girl wailing the notes out now. Doug seems to be getting better at improvising. It's been a lot of work learning for him to play guitar, I remember last year him performing at out lunch break, he was meek-ish and playing his notes by the book but now he is so confident and when he takes his solos there is real feeling in them. I personally like his solos the best. They sound much more smooth and effortless that they just work. I think this workshop although awkward at first has really become a growing experience for all of us, not just as musicians but as people learning to interact with one another. When someone is too loud and we tell them, they turn down without argument, sometimes there is even a "Thanks I didn't realize" or "Oh wow, that worked now I can hear better. None of us sit anymore, well, besides Katz but I don't see how you could wail on the bass drum and high hat without sitting. We look at each other, move around so that we can hear each other, this is really turning out to be something successful. I can't believe how I used to hate this and it ending on a note where I kind of wish I would be going back down to the community center on Tuesday to see Freddie walk in as we are setting up out instruments to dive into another one of his lessons.

Well, one more day, here we go. GET THERE!

The Further You Get...

It seems that the workshop is only fun when we aren't playing crap.

The first thing we did on Friday was learn some of this groovy song that Freddie said he and the guys he plays with were working on. It had a really funky feeling and just playing it felt so different than any I had done before that I really was like "Damn this is really cool, why haven't I tried anything like this before." We did that for a good portion but it seems all good things must come to an end, because we had to go back to that stupid Journey song. The one good thing about it was that other people learned to turn their instruments down enough so that we could hear Ellen soloing. Other than that we didn't do much new this time besides suggest that we play the famously retitled "Teenage Wasteland" next time. This song to me is alright, it's fun once in a while when it comes on the radio, I just wish we could play something that hasn't been covered a million times by every band that does commercials these days. But I guess that's how it has to happen sometimes.

I managed to talk to Doug a bit about the culminating project for the group, seeing as we both thought that we should learn as a group to play a song that was fun and interesting that included the horn that we learned to play with (Ellen). I had suggested Black and White People by Matchbox Twenty, that would be pretty cool I think. I don't know though, we'll have to see soon I guess.

Third Time's The Charm

This workshop seemed to flow a lot better. Maybe it was because I didn't have to listen to about three guitars wailing on the fucking Journey song. I did like what we did this time because it was something that I could actually learn. We did some blues basics and I feel like that was something simple enough for me to learn without really freaking out. Nobody in the room really knew much about the blues that we were playing (Save for John but it wasn't like he was a master of blues guitar) and we all moved slowly towards sounding really good. I actually settled in comfortably with the blues that we were playing rather quickly. It was a pattern of notes that let me play around with the rhythm and that made it fun.

I think this is a step in the right direction. I am actually getting something out of this workshop other than sitting there to hit the same notes of that dumb band's song that shouldn't have ever been popular anyway. If a little girl can match your pitch by straining her voice upward and the lyrics sound like they are from her "Dear Diary" entries then there is something a tad wrong with your song.

I was very happy, though, when Freddie just came out and said "Bobby you can't play the blues on the metal setting, with all of the distortion no one can really hear what notes you are playing" After that I think Bobby learned that he can't just dick around and do whatever he wants. I hope the next workshop is more of a learning experience like this one was rather than just playing awful music.