but if by chance you are here for the night, then all i need is an hour or two to tell the tale of a dreamer like you

I was, of course, genetically predisposed towards musical theatre. My grandpa Don, who I unfortunately knew only as a very young child, did community theatre and musical revues for most of his adult life. I have heard on several occasions a hilarious story about him getting a speeding ticket without his license on him, having to be picked up by his teenage son, wearing makeup. In 1960something. I would be told often in my high school career that various family members wished he had seen me in shows; I wish I'd known him well enough to be able to say the same.

As is so often the case, musical theatre was not love at first sight. My mother showed me her favorite musical as a child, My Fair Lady, sometime in my youth - I remember finding it boring and falling asleep sometime shortly after Eliza leaves Higgins. I remember sitting through Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, waiting and waiting for them to stop freakin singing and TALK. I wanted it to be more like the first musical I saw, Beauty and the Beast, with pretty costumes and a plot I could follow.

...But that lasted until the end of act 1. I can honestly say that the song "Go, Go, Joseph," arguably one of the WORST songs in musical theatre, may have changed my life. I LOVED the number. Loooooved it. And it was hook line and sinker for me for act two. By the time we were leaving the theatre I was begging for the cast recording. Original Canadian cast featuring ex-hearthrob Donny Osmond, natch. I owned it on both CD and tape.

I saw the show at least once more during its sit-down run in Toronto. My best friend in Canada and I would spend HOURS playing the tape and taking turns being the Narrator. Memorizing the colors of the coat. I think I knew every lyric by age 7 or 8.

But though musical theatre had crawled into my veins, the gene (disease?) laid dormant for a while, beneath my first love, figure skating (though as I type this I'm remembering wanting to do a short program to "Any Dream Will Do" so... there you have it, the damage was done).

Sometime thereafter, of course, I moved to California and I've already detailed the end of my career as a figure skater. Indirectly because of - you guessed it - musical theatre. Middle school was my first foray into the world of show choir, and thereby the first staged musical I ever did. Which, ironically, I hated a lot of. I still have unpleasant memories of that production of Cinderella. But it was definitely game over - gone were the summers of horseback riding camp, or art camp, or CTY, or whatever else I was doing any given summer, replaced by theatre camp everywhere. I was by age 14 already an encyclopedia of theatre summer programs in the Bay Area, and a snobby one at that.

Sophomore year I became one of "those" theatre kids. You know. The girl that everyone reeeeeeally, really hates because she sees nothing wrong with goofing around with friends at lunch and proposing we all start singing "La Vie Boheme" on the tables... had I been as generally apathetic towards authority then as I am now I shudder to think how much further THAT misadventure would have progressed. Suffice it to say that if you wanted to know anything about just any musical ever, I was your girl.

That was the year Rent entered my life. It found me at an important time, actually. Not that I was particularly in the demographic to be relating to it, but it was one of the first shows I saw that sat with me for DAYS after the production. It was the first piece of live theatre I cried during. And I wasn't, at the time, easily moved by movies/theatre/anything not my life. Rent showed me that this thing I enjoyed so much could also be important. Could also really have something to say. Could really tell me something about humanity the same way plays could. It was the first time I began to understand the musical theatre dictum that music spoke where words simply weren't enough. It would later that year be the first Broadway show I ever saw, and several years later, the first Broadway ticket I purchased out of pocket. To date the only thing on Broadway specifically I have seen more than twice.

By junior year, I was sitting in my annual certificate consultation when my teacher asked if I had considered theatre as something I seriously wanted to do - I hadn't, really, but it was clear to me by that point there was nothing else I was even halfway as happy doing and I sure as hell had no idea what else I wanted to do. It was in that split second moment that, with no prior consideration, I said yes, it was. And knew that I was right.

I have complained BITTERLY about musical theatre. I have seen some musicals that were horrifying and that would have done better to be plays. I began learning senior year of high school but came to college and really realized that I find plays as magical and as endlessly fascinating. But in my daydreams, I win my Tony award for Best Actress in a Musical, so there you have it.

What makes me think of all this is that In the Heights closes tomorrow. Which is a show I've told myself I was going to see again dozens of times, but now won't get the chance for. In the category of shows that found me at the right time, this one may almost win. It's a tossup for "shows seen freshman year" whether I cried harder watching "What I Did for Love" and realizing that it was my life, or watching 19 year old Nina grapple with the same questions that 18 year old Siobhan was at EXACTLY that time - who am I now and where the fuck do I go from here and what do I tell all these people who expected me to be an instant star and all I am is scared and lost? (Hey wait... that sounds an awful lot like a recurrent theme in this blog for 21 year old Siobhan, doesn't it?) The show was beautiful, it was a little painful, it was splashy and musical, and it was universal. And it, again, had something to say. It reminded me, after a year away from musical theatre and coming to feel that commercialism and art had to necessarily be separate, that a commercial musical - as in, something not written by Odets or Tennessee Williams or Chekhov - could have something important to teach us about ourselves.

I wish that I could get down to the Richard Rogers tomorrow, but winter is NOT the ideal time to be playing lotto, especially not closing day. I feel similarly dissatisfied as I did seeing Rent in its closing week, but not its closing performance.

I said, and I still say, that not getting into CAP at NYU was the best thing that ever happened to me. I am a miles better actress - and probably singer - now than I would have been had my training actually been in musical theatre. I learned to look at a song as an actress first and, as every teacher I've had since says, a fuckton more people can sing and be chorus girls than can act and be leading ladies. Okay, they don't say that and the word fuckton is usually missing, but that's the idea. And I do now ALSO cherish a dear aspiration towards winning a Tony for Best Actress in a Play, so you know, there's that too. But. I miss musical theatre - I haven't been in a musical since December of 2009, and it's been even longer since I was in an actual published musical. I've long since grown out of being the girl with exclusively musicals on her ipod, but I do miss it. The putting it all together. Remembering how much better music can tell the story sometimes. So come on, musical theatre gods, throw me a bone here - I may have strayed, but I think I'm coming back to the fold.

...Too much exposition?

And just for a time, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt

Thanks, Kurt Vonnegut, for the inspiration on the title from a book I've admittedly not read.

I'm back in the concrete jungle, again living my life in this strange and weird place I call home.

I'm in the adjustment period, that period where I say I've arrived "home" from "home." It's like wearing one of those shirts that fits really well the second wearing, but when you put it on the first time you pull at it and look at it funny in the mirror all day and feel like everybody notices that it's not so flattering.

In the grand scheme of things it might not have been the most idyllic trip home - I don't feel like I spent enough time with my family, I'm not sure that I went everywhere I wanted or saw everyone I should've. In spite of my inherent hatred for it, I'm a little bummed I missed my last alumni reception at Harker.

But then I think about that and all I hear and all I see is really, really blue skies - the kind you don't see in New York in the winter - on the freeway singing along to the same questionable music I've had in the car since 11th grade. I think about eating a pizookie for approximately the eight-thousandth time. I laugh at the stupid shit we do for entertainment because actually, the Bay Area is kind of boring. I think about Christmas shining out of my house or driving or seeing movies in the afternoon or home cooked food or vintage shopping or watching Sex and the City or drinking too much coffee at too many psuedo-hipster coffee shops or laughing until I can't breathe with people who I've known for longer than I can actually remember at this point.

I hear the voices and I see the faces of my friends and my family and for every time I've wanted to say "but you don't get it" when they tell me I'm going to be fine, I can't help but be filled with gratitude that they are the people who are against all the odds, still around and still cheering for me. Even when I can't.

It's California that I miss, but I know walking around downtown San Jose that while it would be easy to be there, I don't belong. New York has taken me for it's own and I don't fit in there anymore. But these people, them I miss. Them I feel the absence of everyday, all the more when I've most recently left. If a place is it's people that may perhaps be why I was finally able to learn how to call California home.

I don't mean to say that I don't have friends here, that I don't have a support network here. That I don't have friends I love so, so very much who I know are just as there for me. I know this, I believe this, I feel this in my soul.

It helps, of course, that going home is now a vacation - no work, no stresses, no auditions, just a lot of time to eat and drink and be merry and run around with my friends. But for fifteen days, what a difference it makes to feel lighter. And, you know, warmer.

I have, however, come back recharged and ready and excited to fall in love with New York all over again.

But it was a time. It was certainly a time, moreso this time than the last. I haven't yet figured out how or what made it that way, but a time where for just a few days, everything was beautiful.

I'm feeling something inside, and yet I still can't decide if I should hide or make a wide-open grin

Obligatory reflecting on the end of another year. I like to do it in survey form because it helps to organize my thoughts - ask the right questions, target my thinking, see where everything is going. The truth is I think I needed it this year more than most.

A lot of people have had some bad things to say about 2010. And there certainly are many, many reasons in our world to say 2010 was a less-than-stellar year. There are many reasons in my own life to agree, but the truth is, after my 09, I had nowhere to go but up, really.

2010 was the craziest, hardest, best, worst, happiest, most confusing, FASTEST year of my life. No, seriously. I accept that today is December 31, 2010, but someone hit warp speed in September and I haven't caught up since that time. It's not the first time this year I remember feeling that way - more like the fourth. I learned so much. I gained SO much. I lost so much. I was both lazier and busier than I've ever been ever.

2010 saw the end of some of the best things to ever happen to me. 2010 saw my last day at Strasberg and my last day as a Clefto. The end of my time as a student (of academia, but certainly not of the world). 2010 asked the hard questions about money and life and what am I going to do now and where do I go from here (grad school?) and how on EARTH do I make this acting thing work?

2010 also saw the beginning of a new and weird phase in my life where I had to ANSWER those questions and I had to remind myself each day, every day, that I am happy and lucky to wake up in New York City and to be as much as I know how, not settling to do something that's NOT what I love. To keep trying to remember that I was brave enough to pursue something this hard, and to be proud of that.

2011 is the first time in my life that I can safely say I know nothing of what's coming for me. I don't know what to be excited about. I don't know what to be afraid of. (I do know that I ended both of those sentences in prepositions and here, in my adult life, is what I have learned - sometimes it sounds better that way, dammit.) But I do know there will be changes. I do know that I'm not ready for them. I do know that I'm really, really, really excited for them.

So here it is, my 2010 synthesized into a couple of nice internet generated questions, because I will never have enough words to say everything I need to want to have to LOVE to say about this crazy mixed up year.

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before? Not be a student. I'm sure there's something else but that feels like everything.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I made a lot, I kept exactly two. I'm a glutton for punishment though, so I'll be making more. HAHA wait. Actually, I made one very important non-resolution, but that's the one I kept.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? No.

4. Did anyone close to you die? No.

5. What countries did you visit? Ugh. Still none. I HAVE to use my passport in 2011.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010? Real world acting successes. A boyfriend? Haha.

7. What date from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? May 11/12 - NYU Commencement 2010. Because, graduation. Haha April 23rd, the most difficult work/tech/concert day of ever/my last Cleftos show. I don't remember the date, but the last day I left Strasberg as a student.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Graduating from college.

9. What was your biggest failure? Hm. I worked really hard to arrange something for my summer but didn't get anything. I... I'm not sure. Which is nice, actually.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Actually, I got sick a lot more in 2010 than usual - always just colds and stuff but I remember being sick at least 6 times in 2010 which for me is a lot.

11. What was the best thing you bought? My new mattress. Oh my god. Also maybe my cowboy boots. Haha.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? With each passing year I remember how lucky I am to know the people I know and how lucky I am to need them as much as I do and have it be okay.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? Once again, appalled is better than depressed. A certain director, a certain former peer, some friends. Some national political figures.

14. Where did most of your money go? Rent. Rent. Rent some more. Food. Going out.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? 5 Women, final Clefto show, graduation, summer, Thanksgiving, Christmas.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010? "Don't Stop Me Now" - Queen, "Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" - Elton John, "Rock and Roll" - Eric Hutchinson, "Empire State of Mind" - Jay-Z/Alicia Keys, "Love the Way You Lie" - Eminem/Rihanna. It's thoroughly unsurprising how many of these things are from Cleftos, once again.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

* happier or sadder? The sadder but wiser girl am I.

* thinner or fatter? Fatter. It's fine though, I have a plan for 2011, haha.

* richer or poorer? Poorer.

Ah, my oh-so-successful adult life.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Exercising & saving money. Traveling.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Feeling sorry for myself, Facebook.

20. How will you be spending New Year’s? At Maya's with friends.

21. What was your favorite TV program? Rediscovering Grey's Anatomy. No real changes otherwise.

22. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? I... well. Yes.

23. What was the best book you read? Hmm. I loved The Princess Bride, I loved Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I very much enjoyed The Poisonwood Bible. Hmm. What other new books did I read in 2010? I rediscovered leisure reading late in 2010 and it was great. So I read a lot of new things but those ones stand out most.

24. What was your greatest musical discovery? Eric Hutchinson's "Sounds Like This" album. The song "Carryout" haha. Um... I'm not sure. This was more of a rediscovering old albums that I loved year than a finding new albums I loved year.

25. What did you want and get? To graduate early. To move out of Harlem (sort of). A keyboard. A good part in the practicum show. A relaxing summer break. A new job.

26. What did you want and not get? Listen, I can't help it - a boyfriend. To get cast in things sooner post college. To go abroad ANYWHERE.

27. What was your favorite film of this year? I recently saw The King's Speech and it was beyond excellent. I, predictably as everyone, looooved Inception. Oh! Pirate Radio! Did I see that in 2009 or 2010? Because if it was 2010, definitely that.

28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? TWENTYONE! It was the hottest day in New York City in 25 years or something absurd, but at midnight the night of we went out for a bit, came home. Shopped in the morning, watched Sex and the City and tried not to die of heat stroke, went to work, dinner with the roomies & bar hopping. Great fun.

29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? Managing my money better.

30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010? I don't know? More adventurous than 2009, I guess. New things were more likely to make it into my wardrobe if they didn't look like anything I already owned.

31. What kept you sane? Taking it one day at a time and mastering actually talking about it when something was bothering me for potentially the first time in my life.

32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? A holdover from last year - I'm still totally in love with Matt Morrison.

33. What political issue stirred you the most? Prop 8 overturned, DADT repealed, why we didn't clean up the Gulf Coast for fucking EVER. I have to guiltily confess that I knew next to nothing about midterm elections.

34. Who did you miss? My California friends. My family. The usual.

35. Who was the best new person you met? Uh... I know that I literally have met new people in 2010 but I'm not sure?

36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010: I re-learned in 2010 that it's not worth it to try to be perfect, you will only kill yourself trying.

37. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year: "This Broadway's got - it's got a lot of songs to sing; if I knew the tunes I might join in. I'll go my way alone, I'll grow my own - my own seeds shall be sown in New York City."

38. Make some new years resolutions:

1. Eat. Better. No more excuses.

2. Make and stick to a regular involved exercise plan: dance 1x a week, pole 1x a week, gym 1x a week. Minimum.

3. Take more photos.

4. Really seriously pay better attention to my money, and put more in savings.

5. Travel more.

6. Work harder. Each day, everyday.

THE YEAR 2010

1. Will you be looking for a new job? Probably. Probably not a new job, just a second job.

2. Will you be looking for a new relationship? Yes.

3. New house? Hopefully not, actually.

4. What will you do different in '11? Audition more, dance more, work harder.

5. New Years resolution? Made several. Think these are all actually achievable.

6. What will you not be doing in '11? School! Like at all.

7. Any trips planned? None yet but really, REALLY need to get some in the cards.

8. Wedding plans? Uh. No.

9. What's on your calendar? Work, auditions. Auditions, more work.

10. What can't you wait for? To see what happens.

11. What would you like to see happen different? A lot? I don't know.

12. What about yourself will you be changing? I'm becoming a grown-up. Weird!

13. What happened in 2010 that you didn't think would ever happen? Hahaha a lot, actually. I guess graduation, in that I of course always knew it WOULD happen but it was so so surreal.

14. Will you tell the one you love how you feel? I tell all the ones I love I love them all the time.

15. Will you dress differently this year than you did in 2010? Not terribly much, no.

16. Will you start or quit drinking? Hah. Neither.

18. Will you do charity work? To be honest, I doubt it.

19. Will you go to bars? Yes.

20. Will you be nice to people you don't know? I live in New York, that kind of behavior is considered a liability.

21. Do you expect 11 to be a good year for you? To be honest, 2011 is about to be the most uncharted, unscheduled, unstructured year of my life. I can't expect anything, I don't think, but I hope so.

22. How much did you change from this time last year till now? After 08-09 I had a tough time picturing a more transformative year. Turns out, I was wrong, and it was 09-10.

23. Do you plan on having a child? Absolutely not.

24. Will you still be friends with the same people you are friends with now? I really hope so.

25. Major lifestyle changes? Who knows?

26. Will you be moving? Hopefully not, actually.

27. What will you make sure doesn't happen in 11 that happened in 10? There're some things.

28. What are your New Years Eve plans? Dinner with my family & party with some of my favorites.

29. Will you have someone to kiss at midnight? Haha I have no idea.

30. Wish for 2011? To make my theatrical career happen. To travel. To live and love more.

Winter Wonderland?

For the foremost part of my childhood/adolescence/teenage years in California I reminisced fondly about real winter. I remember the bitter disappointment of my first snowless Christmas, I remember the joy and novelty I felt seeing snow whenever we went to Chicago for New Years', and I remember the excitement I felt when the weather first started to dip in fall of 2007 when I had finally moved back to the East Coast.

Here's the thing. I WAS SO WRONG! I may have been born with cold weather - hell, my birth certificate says Chicago for God's sake, and not for nothing did I spend 6 years in CANADA of all places - but I was certainly, I must now concede, not bred with cold weather. Winter, as I was brutally reminded 3 years ago during my first east coast winter in ELEVEN YEARS, is a very different animal when you a) are 8 and dressed by your mother, and therefore are b) driven everywhere and c) don't care that you look like a bright pink marshmallow.

After a surprisingly cold October yielded to a shockingly mild November faded to an initially freakishly warm December (61 degrees in New York City on December 1st), it is now COLD. I have officially forgotten what it feels like to feel warm. And though seeing your breath is festive, and it snowed a little on Monday which I loved, and yes, cold air really does smell more Christmasy, as it turns out, my rosy recollection was pretty much entirely wrong. I, in fact, hate cold weather.

How do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways:

- Losing feeling in my extremities within minutes of stepping outdoors. I have reasonably poor circulation in my hands and feet. Winter, as you might imagine, does not fix this.

- That my stupid smart phone is a stupid touch screen and thus from December-March, I face the choice of use my phone or retain mobility in my frozen fingers.

- Static. Static everywhere. Static everywhere all the time.

- Scary-tangled hair.

- The charming sensation of starting to sweat before you actually warm up when you sit your tightly bundled ass on a very heated subway car.

- That poor people, like yours truly, live in old apartments with poorly sealed windows and air conditioning units that let in abouuuut as much cold air as there is outside.

- How dry and itchy my face is all the time. Related, that my skin is so dry it STUNG to put perfume on today.

- Really, let's be honest: My Uggs are warm and comfortable but if someone's designed an uglier shoe besides Crocs, I've yet to see it. Catch is, NOTHING ELSE KEEPS MY FEET WARM.

- Having to breathe through my mouth because it stings my nose too much to breathe through it.

- The knowledge that there's no guarantee this will let up before April.

How'd you like to spend Christmas on Christmas Island indeed. Leon Redbone, I'm about ready to take you up on that now.

Sing us a song, you're the piano man

I lost my oldest friend in the world today.

I'm told that as a baby, my friend was my first in-house jungle gym, only smaller and noisier. And certainly older, at that time having approximately 70 years on me.

As a toddler, I was afraid of my friend. It lived in my basement and I vividly remember finding a spiderweb tangled around my friend. But I always came back to my friend. Crawling on it, exploring the magical qualities I found it possessed if manipulated correctly.

The magic is what kept us together as friends - helping me to learn music, helping me to learn in general, listening to me when nobody else could, motivating me, challenging me, frustrating me, rewarding me, giving me more by doing nothing than I could ever have thought really possible.

My friend is - was, I should say - my piano. I remember sitting with my best friend in Toronto, herself a virtuoso pianist already at the ripe-old-age of about 6, teaching me to play "Ode to Joy" based off a milk commercial that then used the song as it's jingle. You might say it was my first lesson in ear training. I remember this equally well as I remember being 16, mired in the depth of problems only silly sixteen-year-old girls can have, playing piano by candlelight during a blackout and forgetting entirely that I had problems of any kind. I remember, too, being about 13 and at a piano store with my cousin, excited to get my hands on all kinds of sheet music to take back and share with my friend. I remember days I played the piano because it was fun, because I needed to practice, because I was upset, because I was bored, because I just... how could I not?

When I moved to New York, I accepted that I would not play piano frequently. Keyboards, are, after all, expensive. And take up a lot of space in a small dorm room. And being not a music major, practice rooms are hard to come by during the hours I need them, and it soon would turn out my practice room time had to basically be reserved for singing. But ah, to come home, to re-greet my friend, to tell it what I had learned and what I had seen. The piano was my constant. One among a number of things that really and truly never changed in the last 3.5 years.

But the fact is, the piano is OLD. Like, really old. Like, dated 1917 old. It's fragile. And nobody else in my family plays. And so when my parents decided that they were, in the long term, looking to sell our house, it became inevitable that the piano should leave us. Now it moved to another family whose little girl will grow up on it the way I did, hopefully. My friend can become her friend. Cycles, and all that.

It's just... I miss my friend. The space of wall where it lives doesn't look right, and I'm not sure how long it will take me to figure out that that's how it goes now. I am in, I am sure, for a very unpleasant surprise at Christmas when I return to this house having forgotten that my friend doesn't live here anymore.

I miss you, my friend. Thanks for everything.

Happy Thanksgiving

I have to admit something: I've been a little, well, negative lately.

I suffer from, I will admit, a uniquely unoriginal problem. I am 21, I have recently graduated from college in an exceedingly unpredictable field in which I want to be succeeding more than I currently am, I have a "day" job that I enjoy but am not exactly stimulated by, I am perpetually broke, and I don't have a boyfriend.

What the fuck ever.

I have always loved Thanksgiving. It's not difficult to love a holiday with the basic premise of eating to excess, relaxing, and celebrating what's good in life.

Every year we ask the question, "what are you thankful for?" And I have to be honest - I contemplated this question this morning and realized that this time last week, I'm not sure I would've known how to answer it. Rather, I would have known what I was supposed to say to answer it but I'm pretty sure I would've been too bogged down in feeling sorry for myself to be able to say the words.

So it was refreshing, when I asked myself this morning, to remember that I am thankful. I thought about making a list, but it would take too long and for once, I don't feel the need to dissect and itemize.

Suffice it to say that I am thankful for so many things I couldn't even start to itemize and dissect. The other stuff will be there, and that's okay. You're supposed to be lost when you're 21 and six months out of college, I think. How else would we learn to find our way?

And hey, maybe Santa will bring me a boyfriend this year (kidding! Unless you're reading this, Santa, in which case I'm kidding less).

I am thankful. I am so, so very thankful.

Tee Hee

I generally work very very hard at a thing most people would call "maturity" or "being an adult" or simply "being the bigger person." And generally speaking, that works for me, or I should say that these techniques have lead me towards a mastery of suppressing a massive quantity of unproductive rage.

Periodically, however, there is NOTHING better than a dose of the sixth grade to remind you that sometimes, the immature path is waaaaaaaaay more fun.