the curious case of transcendence

My show opens in two weeks. We've been working for two and a half months now, but it feels like no time at all, and I promise this is going to come out writing-related at some point, but it will take me a while. On the very first day of rehearsals, the director told us that this show is going to be hard. That we're going to give it a lot and its going to take everything we give and we need to be there to get each other through this. I bumped my friend's shoulder and laughed. As a musical-theater veteran, I was pretty sure I was prepared for this. I've done eight mainstage shows in two years, something like seventeen shows in total. I could take on Jesus Christ Superstar in all its rock-opera, dark, bittersweet glory and come out of it grinning. 

This show opens in two weeks and it is one of the hardest things I have ever done. Yesterday, we ran Trial Before Pilate seriously for the first time. I spend the scene screaming and cheering for someone to be killed, someone who I spent most of the show leading up to that loving. It was horrible. Afterward, we listened to the very ending of the show - the Crucifixion, which I had never heard before, and John 19.41, which is a beautiful, beautiful song. Every just sat there for a long time, in that sort of silence where it seems like you can feel the hearts of everyone around you beating, like all of you are one person. I sat with my forehead resting on my knees, curled up as small as I could get. 

 No one talked for a very long time. Eventually, when we did move, we travelled toward each other. Everyone just held on to one another, because what else could we do? We were crying. I felt like everything inside of me had been ripped out and there was just this raw, empty space inside of my ribs. It was like we were all these fragile, paper-thin things and the only thing holding us together was each other. 

It was beautiful in that way that sad things are, and I think its going to take me a very long time to get over it. 

But it was good to feel so much, even if we were crying. To be able to all have your hearts bared for everyone else to see. And isn't that why we do it? For that moment of transcendence, when you're holding very still on a dirty stage because everything seems like its made of paper and glass, or when the words are rushing out of you so fast you're fingers can't keep up and your heartbeat rushing in your ears? 

Isn't that to create something extraordinary? Isn't that why we read, to experience things we can't without words, to meet people and do things that are impossible? It's why I do. I love books and movies and plays that make me cry and make me hopeful and make my heart pound. It makes me feel alive, and so very here, right now, that I wouldn't trade it for anything. 

what I'm (well, was) reading: december

I haven't had a huge amount of time to read recently with midterms, but I've sort of scraped the surface of my to-read pile. Just a little bit.

Unspoken by Sarah Rees Brennan

I have been shamelessly stalking this wonderful person for quite a while now, but it's taken me forever to get my hands on one of her books. It is sort of amazing. I had to hole myself up in my room, only emerging for food and tea, for a day and a half because I couldn't put it down. It was physically painful. The characters were wonderful, a big cast of them that were all very individual and interesting - it's nice to read about a heroine who has friends who are girls and doesn't dump them for the boys. Kami, the heroine's, friends are an integral part of the story and I love them. The last quarter felt a little rushed to me, and it stretched my suspension of belief a bit on how well everyone was taking this huge amount of crazy information they were getting. It made me cry anyway. Seriously, this book will tear out your heart, eat it, and smile at you all the while.
I can't wait for the next one.




Tithe by Holly Black

I have a complicated relationship with Holly Black. I love the Curseworkers to death. I have all three books stacked in the Favorite Wonderful pile next to my desk. I cannot stand the Spiderwick Chronicles and never could. I could just never get through them.
I have mixed feelings about Tithe. It's the gritty sort of faerie tale I always wanted to read, blending legends and modern teenager-ness nicely. The settings were fantastic. The characters were realistic; they swore and smoked and dreamed and generally acted like teenagers. And that is possibly what made this hard to read: people aren't black or white, and they do things you don't like and things you do. Sometimes they make decisions that you sort of hate them for.
The heroine Kaye stands up for herself against lots of testosterone-driven sleezy teenager boys and I applaud her. She has these wonderful realistic regrets about it. But her relationship with her best friend seems thin and the girl herself is a little annoying.
 I thought the pacing was off; the beginning was slow and when it sped up it was really too fast and stretched my suspension of disbelief. Overall, it had some really, really wonderful things in it, and some flaws, too but it was worth the read.

Road Trip Wednesday: if I could build my own personal paradise (bookstore)

This is in response to this topic posted on YA Highway, a YA writing and publishing blog that I follow obsessively.

from here, by Lori Nix

If I had a bookstore, it would be one of those tiny hidden away ones in a city that you stumbling across trying to get out of the rain. Like Daunt in London, which is in a lovely old house and I think I could live there. There would be big windows, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and window seats in which to read. There would be one of those balcony second floors with the spindly railings tooled in flowers and thorns and tiny towns of people waiting for an adventure. There would be a spiral stair case. The history section would have leather worn leather chairs and the YA section would have pillows tucked into the corners, or maybe there would be no sections at all. All of the floorboards would creak and it would smell like paper and ink and warmth.

I would sell every kind of book I could get my hands on. Old expensive ones with fading print and paper backs with soft covers and the brand new first-print ones with slick pages. There would be too many to put on the shelves and they'd have to be stacked.

There would be a lot of stools. No, no stools, those ladders on rails that slide back and forth. There would also be tea and occasionally cookies and hot chocolate and bookmarks with ribbon tied to the end and messenger bags. Perhaps I would have a box of steampunk goggles under the counter.

I would wear knit hats and sit on a stool behind the counter and drink tea out of a painted mug and read books. There would be paper cranes hung from the ceiling. Sometimes I would play music and sometimes it would be so quiet you could hear the rustle of the pages and your own heartbeat.

I would probably call it Bookend or the Inkworld or something equally book-related. "12 Grimmauld Place" has a nice ring to it.

It would be glorious. I think I may just have to build it.

 

it transpires that I have started a blog (but you already knew that)

Hello, Internet. My name is Sarah. It's very nice to meet you. I write fiction, which sometimes involves deadly shovels and unexplained magic and a sense of bittersweetness. And perhaps dragons. I like dragons. I may or may not be in highschool. It is perhaps the most interesting, terrifying, and wonderful place in the world. 

Here are a few things I love: 

An epic story told in book covers

Beautiful stories that make me cry in very public places. 

The awesome guy who pretended to be a car seat in a mission to scare all late drive-thru workers. 

Photo series(es). Particularly this one and this one. 

These people. And these. And also Death Cab for Cutie. 

And stories. Stories that make me laugh, that make me cry and make me close my eyes because they're beautiful and need to be tucked away somewhere in my mind. 

What is it that you love?