Practice and the Industry

Finally, a post about something Industry related!

So it has come to pass that Starz has hired me as a Reader. Calloo-Callay! It's been more than a couple of months since I've been paid to read anything. I've read a couple of things here and there for free, just to keep that part of my brain in fighting trim, but HBO has been silent as the proverbial graveyard and Miramax/Disney has completely changed over their Development department, so they probably don't even have me on file anymore.

So yay! for Starz! I'm gainfully employed again! Hopefully there will be regular work so that I can start thinking about living on my own again (or with a roommate or two). Gah! What a dry spell!

I enjoy Reading, mostly because it actually puts my expensive analytical brain to use in the way it was trained (mostly - it was trained for analyzing historical texts, but this is close enough). I enjoy the time-to-money equation, because I'm really horrendously fast.

Fingers crossed that the invoice-to-paycheck hang-time is minimal.

Back on the subject of Burn Club - hah! didn't think I'd leave it alone, didja? - I have finally gotten my hands on my own practice staves. Well, I've found a pair of baby cheerleader batons that are half the length of real staves, but they're the right diameter to practice with so I can form the callouses. I can get smooth with them and practice every day, and then I can finally light up when I get my own staves.

It was an EPIC quest to find those batons. Since Toys'r'Us closed its brick-and-mortar doors, it's devilish hard to find certain toys. Hardly anyone carries hula hoops, for instance. And batons! OMG, I must have called seventeen different sporting goods, toy stores, costume shops and party supply outlets before I found them (in an Aahs! costume section, in the High School Musical category). I even called the UCLA costume shop, figuring that they might have something for Marching Band. When I said I was looking for something to fit personal needs, the guy on the phone huffily told me that it "wasn't that kind of store" and hung up on me! I think he thought I was a sex worker.

Oh, the humanity. (hah!)

Well, thank you High School Musical. Thank you for my baby practice batons.

new moves

Somebody set themselves on fire last night. It was an accident, duh, but still kind of shocking. He's fine - stopped and dropped and has a minor burn to show for it. Got right up and worked the same trick again, successfully.

I admit that I froze. I wasn't one of the spotters, so no harm done, but there was a real moment of unreality for me. A disconnect - 'huh, that guy's on fire'. Not sure how that happened. My normal reaction to danger is action. Maybe it was because it was fire. I have some crooked wiring when it comes to people burning to death - secondary trauma, but still valid. I should work on that.

Got into working on my own stuff. Learned three new tricks, which was awesome. I was really sore for the first twenty minutes but I worked through it. I need to get up to practicing every day. I also need to put some serious thought into performance presentation. I'm not some tall skinny chick who can look hot while twirling fire. I'm an average-size, rather round & curvy girl who doesn't want to embarrass herself. Right now I'm feeling white-and-black, maybe old-school harlequin?

I feel stupid and uncool among all the experts, but I'm trying to ignore my inner ninth-grader and just do the work. It's the work that will build the self-respect, and the respect of others.

Got to keep at it.

Limitations and compensations

Burn Club tonight, and I learned something new about myself.

Firstly, I practiced with double staff again and managed to incorporate some dance moves for the first time. It's a performance, after all, not just a demonstration of tricks. Got an eyeful of one of the planet's best fire-spinners (single staff), who was there with a couple of students. No joke, his ordinary practice stuff was Cirque du Soleil, world-class jaw-dropping stuff. Wow.

"Sensei" brought his brand-new "floating" sword, a burn tool in the form of a sword but balanced like a staff at a point in the haft. Very fun to play with. I was trying to balance it on my palm and failing when Sensei pointed out that I had no depth perception. I couldn't tell when the brass pommel was moving toward me, so I couldn't compensate.

Honestly, I had no idea that my depth perception was so minimal. After some discussion, we agreed that my advanced math/physics/spatial relations abilities must have compensated for me in my developmental years, without me thinking about it. Hence, I could play lacrosse no problem (angles, trajectories), but couldn't walk a balance beam (can't see how far the beam is from my foot when one foot is raised).

Kinda explains why I have to curl my toes over the lip of the top stair of the staircase, every time I want to start down. Huh.

Felt despondent for a few minutes, convinced that my mother was right: Anatomy *is* destiny. Contemplate *that* piece of indifferent despair with me, go ahead. Then I figured out that if I watched the reflection of the street lights in the brass pommel, and kept them in the same proportion to the angle of the haft, then the sword would necessarily have to be upright.

Wouldn't you believe it... balance.

TAKE THAT!!

Building a Bike, part one

As an unexpected off-shoot of hanging with Burn Club, I have begun to build my own bicycle, from scratch. Which is not to say that I'm welding steel together on my mother's rooftop. Um, no. I went to the Bicycle Kitchen, a very cool place on a street with a very silly name.

(Heliotrope.)

(Go ahead and laugh; I'll wait.)

The Bicycle Kitchen is a volunteer bicycle education workshop space, where they give access to tools and expertise to them (and their bikes) what need them. They will also price a "project" for you, which means they will accept a donation in exchange for a bike frame and show you how to build an entire bicycle from it and the various spare parts that they have in the shop.

So awesome! I can't even tell you. Well, okay I can. I'm not the building-est of girls. My tomboy phase was brief and confined to Lego and tree-climbing. I helped build a suspension bridge at camp once (don't ask), but that was mostly sawing and measuring.

But this. This is a thing that I'm building, with my own two hands. And it's going to have a purpose and be a part of my life. It's not a gift, like my embroidery shenanigans. It's not art, like my writing or painting. It's not going to be somewhere *else*. It's going to stay, a part of me. I'm building another part of me.

Also, it's wicked fun. I got dirty!