What did you do in college today?

I did a headstand. Fuck yeah, bitches. I did this:

Not even kidding. Jeff Mills is a God. "It's the small victories," he said, after I thanked him for the day's class. I was freaked out that I would hurt my arm (it's been almost 2 years since the car accident) but everything was fine. It's a lot easier than it looks! The balancing is the tough part. Also, I can TOTALLY do a backward roll now! I was having so much trouble with them at first, but now I'm so pro. Well, I don't want to get cocky. But I've got it down now.

Today was so busy. Voice and Movement from 9 to 12 and then a Movement workshop with Tim Miller, a fantastic artist whom you should look up. He's very political and socially active. The Supreme Court struck down his case against the US Government for taking away his Artist's Grant because of homosexual subject matter. "Standards of decency" are constitutional criterion for federal funding of the arts. Can you believe that shit? Basically, we have no freedom of expression when we use Uncle Sam's money. His master class was very cool. We created our own 30 second pieces in groups of 3 and 4. Mine was very abstract, but he really liked it. The other three people totally gave me a chance to act in theirs. All in all I played myself, a sourfully neglectful father, a fat pervert in a grocery store, and a delicious red apple. I was approached as the latter all damn day. I must have made an impression.

Then I had American Drama in which my phone went off on the LOUD setting! So scary, especially because everyone was falling asleep. I ate with Cassie, constantly asking why she was eating her birthday dinner with ME, and then went to Tim's performance at the Multi Cultural Center. After, I hung with Cassielicious, ate a cupcake, told my famous toilet pregnancy story, made a few friends and then came home. Did some homework and now I be bloggin'!

Oh, I forgot. I went to see Irwin after Drama, and we had a really great little chat about Rabbit Hole, my excitement about the program, Tim's workshop, and I spilled my heart about how amazing it is to be taught by Annie. I feel like when Irwin and I talk, it's a mutual lovefest of the arts. I passionately speak of my love, excitement, frustration, fear of my craft while he nods, wide-eyed and with a deep sense of wonder, as if to say "Yes, I know. You don't know how much this speaks to me. Go on. I am listening." Finally, I left after an invitation to come back next week like always. I later remarked to Cassie that I hoped he had cleaned my jizz of of his casting couch so that Trevor Wade (who came in after me) had someplace to sit. Yeah... self-rape is kinda how I described our passionate chats to CassMcGass.

Well, I'm going to get up EARLY tomorrow to eat breakfast with Cassie and Liz. Don't have class til 1:30 and it's my ONLY day that late, but I'm gettin' up at 8:20. Ew. Need to sleep. I also need to memorize a beautiful poem for a character I'm doing in Annie's class. I started with the picture below and then found a poem that I think creates a really dynamic character. I'll explain more after tomorrow's workshop with it.

The Serenity in Stones

Simon J. Ortiz

I am holding this turquoise

in my hands.

My hands hold the sky

wrought in this little stone.

There is a cloud

at the furthest boundary.

The world is somewhere underneath.

I turn the stone, and there is more sky.

This is the serenity possible in stones,

the place of a feeling to which one belongs.

I am happy as I hold this sky

in my hands, in my eyes, and in myself.

'Night, all.

-Big D

Lollipop ,Lollipop ,Lolli- Lollipop, Lollipop Lolli-

I feel different this school year.

I think there are a lot of reasons, but here are a few.

I don't like living in the dorms again very much. Going from a strong, loving community with so many activities to do at any time to the drab, lifeless Mountain Cluster in San Rafael is depressing. Also depressing is the fact that only like 10% of 2012s still have meal plans and that means I only have about 5 people to eat with on any given day. Half of the time I eat alone, which isn't terrible or embarrassing, but it is lonely. When I have eaten with people, it's been hilariously fun. Singing dirty rap songs as an elderly British aristocrat makes even the worst pasta bearable.

The BFA scares me. It's scary because I love it so much and it's such a challenge. I've never loved anything this hard. Mock Trial came fairly easy to me. Swim team was definitely not a love. This is like the combination of those two, plus passion. Do you understand why it's scary now? With swimming, I might have "cheated" a bit at practice in order to save some breath or not get as sore. I'd only really try at something I couldn't do if others were watching and I had to prove myself or "encourage encouragement." In the BFA, there are things I cannot physically do in comparison to the rest of the class, and it makes me fucking sad! For those of you who don't know, the core classes for the BFA are Voice, Movement, and Acting. Movement is the one I'm most referring to.

A normal day in Movement consists of:
1.) We always start the class with hugs. You hug every one of your classmates.
2.) Following Jeff. Jeff Mills is the teacher, a god like the rest of the faculty. He has us run after him in a single file line while he throws a ball to each of us and we have to throw it back, all the while still moving. We then walk on the balls of our feet, heels, outsides, insides, combinations of all, and then in lunges. Finally we get into a circle and do intense stretching and different kinds of Sun Salutations. For those of you not familiar with yoga, it's not as easy as it looks.

http://www.abc-of-yoga.com/yogapractice/sunsalutation.asp

We add in cat, cow, downward facing down, child's pose... a lot.

3.) We throw 3 balls around the circle, naming the person we are throwing them too. Takes a lot of concentration.

4.) We break out the tumbling mats and learn a variety of gymnastic-type moves. So far we've covered somersaults, forward rolls, shoulder rolls, backward rolls (so fucking hard) volleyball jumps, 360 degree twists, and correct cartwheels. With my arm still weak, he told me I don't have to do the cartwheels, but I'm afraid that it doesn't make me look good to stand back and watch.

5.) After this we do one of many things. Usually it's an exercise to teach a principle of space or dramatic tension. We might pose and then our partner has to fill in the negative space, or we might run toward our partner at full tilt from opposite ends of the room and meet in the middle as close to them as possible without touching or breaking eye contact.

6.) We finish the class with hugs.

When I'm in this class, I have the time of my life. But I can't shake the sadness I feel at not being able to do some things or do them well. I know there is always someone who can do things better than you, but I want to progress. I'm trying to loose weight, which I know will help with a lot of this, but in the mean time I'm having a lot of trouble keeping the faith in myself. If it weren't for my amazing classmates or Jeff's support, I would probably be crying in the bathroom after every class. I can't imagine loosing half of them by the end of the year. I can't imagine ever leaving them.

Voice with Michael Morgan is incredible. The man is a god. I was having trouble with a breathing exercise and he came up behind me, placed his hands on my neck, pulled it toward the sky and all of the sudden, I was breathing more accurately than ever.

Annie's acting class continues to amaze me. She is making me approach everything we do with a childlike sense of wonder, which is what every artist should have. I shocked myself with how deeply connected I got to a character in a scene in which my only lines were 'no' and my partner's lines were 'please'. That was only half my responsibility, as Andrew Fromer, my partner, was perfection. I got some amazing feedback and I felt like I would never question that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life ever again. I'll never forget the exercise we did with the egg.

This program is fantastic and I can't ever imagine leaving it. I'm working for myself. I'm challenging myself to grow in ways I've never thought possible. It's making me feel alive.

Dinner soon with Maggie. Chargers game starting in 15.

Something I learned from seeing Whip It yesterday with Emily: Just because you have a new family doesn't mean you throw the old one away.

That line really spoke to me.

-Big D

"Dylan. Ripples... desk... bones."

I know it's only been a few days since my last post, but I have a lot of things to say.

Today was the first day of class and since none of my professors or TAs took part in the Walkout, I had class all day. My section for English 10 (Lit) was cool. My TA's favorite show is Glee, he's from Albany, NY, and he was very interested in the fact that I'm a theater major. He kept asking if I would be in Rabbit Hole since we're reading it in class and are supposed to attend a performance.

This brings me to my next class, Fundamentals of Acting (THTR15A). Anne Torsiglieri, my teacher and a Broadway vet (although she did not talk about her past work in class) is just great. She's engaging and makes me feel at ease. However, I felt like I was holding myself back in class today, which I need to learn not to do. I was nervous, okay? And the exercises we did were weird and uncomfortable, which is what they were supposed to be. But it was only the first class and things will change. "Everything changes" is the thing I hear most from older BFAers.

One of the activities was writing about ourselves in a stream of consciousness. I was so not ready for that, and the end product was ridiculous. After I re-read it, I felt like it did a great job of showing how confused I am about life right now, but other than that it was just terrible. Not a good portrait of me at all. Not a full, correct portrait, rather. Maybe I'll tack it on to the end. Maybe.

Because I was placed into the later acting class, I have to rush to my English 10 class, halfway across campus every Tuesday and Thursday. Not liking this. I don't have time to relax or debrief my mind. It's tough, okay? So, my freakin' English 10 class was so terrible. I think I'll like the class, but I sat through it thoroughly pissed off. Here's why:

The prof is having us buy $192.80 worth of books for this quarter already, and she was going to have the other readings available online. However, she asked the class to vote on whether they wanted a reader to purchase instead. We voted with iClickers, and it was very close, with online winning. THEN she let us discuss it. About six people said we should have readers for reasons such as:

"I like to take notes and mark up my readings."
"If people want to print out the pages, it will cost a lot in ink and paper."
"If people printed, it would waste trees."
"Staring at the computer for a long time makes your eyes hurt."
"You get distracted if you read online by things like Facebook."

Apparently, these STUPID ASS FUCKING CONCERNS actually convinced people. The second vote had readers winning by a landslide. So we'll have to buy another $35 thing to buy for this fucking class now. It was the first time I realized how many rich people go here. I had been told that SB had the richest kids in the UC system, but also the poorest. Well, English majors must be fucking rich as fuck. I'm not about to drop 250 bucks on this class. Sorry. And you can't resell readers. Fuck that shit.

So that was my day, not including a de-stressing dinner with Maggie, the DA application info session, and currently watching the premier of Grey's. Not liking it so far. Maybe there was a REASON I stopped watching last season after the first thirty minutes.

Anyway, I'm really tired right now and my head feels super heavy because of that. I'm going to try to relax. No classes tomorrow, but I do have the Theater/Dance Convocation! Oh and Stephen Schwartz, composer/lyricist of Wicked, Godspell, and Pippin is doing a private Q&A with BFAers next weekend. Any questions I should ask for you all?

-Big D

Replace "Rhiannon" with the word "Depression." I do it all the time.

I have a lot on my mind. I'll throw the most interesting bits out there first for those of you who like to read the first sentence and close the tab:

1.) I have a hypothesis that when you have to pee, your body will release less pee (you will pee for a shorter amount of time) when the bathroom you have to walk to is further away. I've tried to research this on the Internet, but it seems like no one else is really concerned with it. When I was at school all last year, I generally took ten seconds to get it all out. When I am home, it's more like 20 or 30. The bathroom at school was clear down the hall and around the corner. At my house, it's steps away.

2.) Unlike my coworker Matt, I don't hate everything about community bathrooms. However, my one big thing is pooping in them. Especially when you are an RA. I'm sure Hitler never pooped in the same room as someone washing their hands or sitting "next door". Not that I'm comparing my RAing to Hitler, but the power is what I'm talking about. Whenever I was too lazy to ride the elevator down seven stories to the first floor usually vacant bathrooms, or too embarrassed to walk through the lobby and past the Desk Attendant thereby letting them see that the only reason I was in the lobby was to use the bathroom for longer than a minute which equals pooping... I would use my own 7th floor community bathroom and, as I ended up calling it, "pop, lock and drop it." Get the job done in the quickest amount of time possible. I hated when someone would walk in and just stay there so you couldn't outwait them.

I've been feeling creative recently. I stopped writing the play based on my extended family after some tragedies sort of cut that ribbon, but I've discovered something that might compel me to open up that file again. Maybe Cougar.

My roommate sounds nice. I talked to him on the phone the other day. He's a 5th year senior, but that's only because he transferred in. I don't know any transfers who won't be 5th years unless y'all aren't telling me. Anyway, he's leaving after the Winter, and he thinks I'll have the room to myself for Spring. I told him about the 500 triples they have this year, but he said his friend last year had a double to himself for both Winter and Spring. Odd.

I'm going back tomorrow- today. My train leaves at noon, leaving here at 9. I've lost my fucking debit cards for Sun Community and Wells Fargo. No activity shows up on either account online so they must be here somewhere. I scoured the house and cars, though and found nothing. A cleaning lady came two days after I got here, but she said she never saw them. Oh well. Calling Sun Community tomorrow.

Thursday is the first day of school and I will start the BuFAh. Scary but exciting shit. I'm psyched to meet Anne Torsiglieri, the new acting teacher who's done some amazing work on Broadway. I wonder if Irwin and her are from the same Princeton/Julliard classes?

Sorry, I'm rambling. I'll cut it off now. My mom asked if I felt sad going back at all. My answer was that I felt "like when you have a bad headache but there is no headache." The annoyance, the nervousness, need for progression. Weird I know.

-Big D

Pissed Off Quickie

A lot has gone on since I last blogged, but I'm not in the mood right now. I just need to say a few things...

Michael Navarro: You are a pathetic pussy bitchface motherfucker whose balls should be roughly slid against a cheese grater until they are fucking GONE. Where the fuck do you get off writing that shit in my year book? Asshole! If I'd have known at the time I would have called you out right in the middle of Whitehead's classroom of evangelical conservative cow dung and ripped your fucking head off. I don't even know where the shit you're going to school, but if it IS UCLA, I hope you trip and tumble all the way down those big ass steps by Bruin Walk. I hope you get eaten alive by the baby squirrels. I hope someone hangs you from the top of Dykstra. You fucking fatass babyfaced cock choking ASS SHIT! The next time I see you in town, at the donut shop, jack in the crack, von's, wal mart, wherever the FUCK you like to be, I'll make sure to rape you with my words so badly that you'll want to press charges. I hate you for pulling that shit. How dare you. How DARE you.

-Big D

PS: I know... this post is SO not inclusive. You'll learn what that is in my next entry. Good night, y'all!

That Little Pink Plus Sign is So Un-holy

Sam business over.

I'm a drama queen.

I love my head staff.

I'm okay.

:-)

-Big D

Watching Myself

I did something really fucked up today/yesterday.

Some may disagree.

I feel like I used the memory of Samantha Brown.

It was during an activity for FSSP RA training where we were supposed to describe a situation in which we could have helped someone but we didn't. I knew that Sam's death wasn't what they were looking for but I couldn't get it out of my head. I should have just fucking passed but I didn't. So I told about how she kicked my chair in trial and maybe whispered my name before going silent for a while and then seizing. I told about how I felt guilty that I didn't turn around. And then I added as a side note that she later died and I felt guilty again.

I should not have used her like that. It was so awful of me and I hated myself for it immediately after speaking. The tears came fast. Tears for missing her which I do often, and tears for abusing her like that. I used her. Sure I didn't have anything to say but I could have PASSED. It would not have been that hard. I don't want to be thought of as the attention seeker and I don't want people to think I'm troubled or anything. I just feel terrible. It was so inappropriate.

I'm gonna talk to a head staff member about it and just... talk it through. I mean, I didn't even mention how great of friends we were. I can't fucking believe myself. I wiped like my eyes were my ass and dried up before I had to speak again, but they just kept coming back every few minutes. I felt all that guilt again.

Why did I think I could talk about her in my One Man Show in high school? The things we learn when we get older. Two quotes come to mind:

Scraping knees, tying shoes,
Starting school, paying dues,
Finding there's no way
We can spend a lifetime playing ball
Part of getting tall

Bittersweet and strange
Finding you can change
Learning you were wrong

Sorry Sam. By the way, sorry I didn't think too much about you on the 11th. My birthday has become the time of death. You're just part of a growing list. But you're up there with the best. You are one of the best. You were the best.

Fucking poetic flowery shit.

I miss you.

-Big D.