On Friday I frequented a night club here in Cardiff, in celebration of my flatmates’ birthday. The club wasn’t really my style; it was an underground mosher-style place with a heavy choice in music. However I put on a brave face for the sake of my friend and soldiered on! There was a huge redeeming feature, however. After one o’clock in the morning, the bar served free toast to anybody.
I surely think, this should be a requirement of all night clubs!
At this time of writing I am safely tucked up in my upstairs living room with the fire on, it’s cold and dull outside and I think I deserve the rest as I have worked hard this last week.
Yesterday was okay.
My first lesson was singing at 9:30. We had to perform a solo piece of our choosing.
Being in a class of singer songwriters and musical theatre professionals, this task was a tad daunting.
I decided to sing ‘Light of the World’ by Tim Hughes. It went very surprisingly well; (meaning I didn’t go out of tune or forget the words!) I’m actually really enjoying singing at Rose Bruford.
After that, I had my yoga class, I don’t love it, but I’m learning to like it more each lesson. There’s something about yoga that makes you feel healthy.
A few lessons later it was time for music class. (A four and a half hour lesson every Friday) We started the lesson by recapping ‘Mercy’ from last week, and then began to learn the new song: Reach Out (I’ll Be There).
This time I was moved from drum kit to tambourine and BV’s (backing vocals), it’s nice to be working on the tune section instead of the rhythm for a change, but it means I actually have to understand the notes, and this is new to me.
Friday evening was fun. Most of my class mates decided to go to ‘Fabric Nightclub’ in Farringdon. Not being seduced by drum and bass line up, a night that ended at 6:30AM and a £13 entry charge, I thought better of the trip. So instead I went to a nice local pub here ‘The Portrait’ with my Australian classmate Nicolette. So that was cool.
My first proper week of uni has kickstarted with a bang.
For those that don’t know I am reading Music at Cardiff University on a three year BMus course. I was very excited on Monday about finally getting down to lectures; I can’t believe I can get a degree in a subject I love so much!
My first lecture was ‘Elements of Tonal Music 1′. This is a core module running throughout the year which looks at what makes up Western Art Music. In the first hour long lecture, we listened to Berwald, ABBA(!) and Mozart. After an hour break I had a seminar group with 8 other people where we studied harmony in a bit more detail.
Here followed another hour break where I did some piano practice and warmed up for my vocal audition. Now, Cardiff University has a big choral society, not requiring audition, which I had intended to join. However, it also has a Chamber Choir, which is basically a more elite and much smaller choir, which requires audition. Although I should have really pushed myself to go for this in the first place, I didn’t because of the fact I have never auditioned vocally before and my sight-singing (singing a melody from the score without hearing it) ability isn’t too hot. On top of all this I had good old Freshers’ Flu and so with a painfully sore throat, merely the thought of attempting to sing in an audition hurt.
Despite all this, the director of the Chamber Choir had been persistently trying to contact me in various ways over the weekend. This culminated in a text message from him (who knows how he got my number) on Sunday night. “You’ve been head-hunted” was the phrase my flatmate used. He expressed how he had been given my name from the head of department (?!) and he wanted me to audition tomorrow. Crap.
I scribed a lengthy reply expressing how I was grateful of his invitation but at the same time lacked the confidence to audition. This was followed by a reply reading:
“David I thank you for being so open with me. Although you should let me be the judge of whether you meet the standard I require. I will see you tomorrow from 2:45pm in room 2.12.”
Bastard!
After calming myself, I decided this was indeed for the best and realised that a certain Lord, forever watching over us, may have had a hand in the way everything had unfolded. Dreading the audition all day, I marched up there after my harmony seminar. It went rather well. We had a chat about my previous experience, he seemed very pleased I had a sacred choral backgound. The sight-singing also went fairly well. I mucked up in a few places, at which point he started to bash my part on the piano to correct me, but apart from that I was almost surprised by this skill I didn’t know I had! We shook hands and he told me he would see me on Wednesday (oh dear, not another audition I thought, momentarily) but he explained the rehearsals are 3:30 til 5pm every Wednesday and a wash of relief ran through me.
I skipped merrily to my Repertoire Studies seminar which was no more than an introduction to the topic and then home for some dinner. That night we had Symphony Orchestra, the first rehearsal. What I saw was amazing, the biggest orchestra ever!
A Mahler symphony would have been quite suitable!
The large numbers that had turned up resulted in nearly all the woodwind and brass having to audition for a place which is a shame. I was lucky being a violin and managed to get into the firsts! The conductor decided everybody could stay as we had a run though of Vaughan-Williams’ London Symphony. It was very funny to listen to… not only were we all sight-reading but there was an incredible imbalance of forces!
Yesterday I had only two lectures, ‘Composition 1a’ and ‘Making Music History’. Both of which were really enjoyable despite my illness. I am incredibly lucky being a music student:
But although we have a fairly blank timetable, we do have evening rehearsals lasting 3 hours on two nights and have to put in hours of practice time every week. Roll on half term ;)
For goodness sakes!
I actually haven’t blogged in actual years!
So much has gone on in my life since my last entry, it would be positively ludicrous to try and bring you up to date, in what would be some massive marathon of my life, so I’ll just tell you what’s been going down recently, then hopefully other facts from days gone by will seep through!
So, I now live in London. And I am now officially a student at drama school. (Rose Bruford)
Man, it feels good to say that.
I have spent like the last 10 years of my life working up to get into drama school, so it’s very surreal actually being here. Living in London, and spending all my time acting.
I love it. But drama school is not without its pain.
In all honesty, the last few weeks of my life have been the most physically, emotionally and mentally stressful ever.
For anyone that doesn’t know; proper British drama schools really put students through their paces. Days are long (9 hours to be exact!) Lessons are tough, and it’s all fast paced, so it feels like I’m on a train, but can’t get off. Very exhilarating, but completely exhausting, and just a tad scary!
To put you in the picture: here are the lessons I take part in, during my first semester…
Limbers (9 o’ clock every morning, in order to make us bendy!)
Musicality (explores the musicality of acting)
Voice (does what is says on the tin!)
Poetry (exploring the spoken voice through poems)
Contact Impro (getting very physical and rolling over people)
Expressive Movement (dancing like Beyonce!)
Animal Studies (squawking like a chicken)
Pure Movement (Pain, for pains sake!)
Acting (exploring the self, I had to do a 15 minute solo in my first week, based on the idea of NOT acting: harder than it sounds!)
Feldenkrais (weird movement thing; you don’t need to know if you don’t do drama!)
Singing (fun, but SCARY, I have to sing solo to my entire year!)
Voice Impro (messing with the voice)
Yoga (again, more pain!)
Speech Fundamentals (theory!)
Music (great lesson, we all jam, we did Duffy’s Mercy last week!)
I have been describing drama school to people like this:
RANDOM PERSON: So what’s drama school like, then?!
GEORGE: Well… It’s like a pretentious version of military training! (Not joking!)
Jokes, aside, I love it though. And I’ve developed a new lease of life and energy!
The people on my course are all lovely, but it’s quite intimidating, because everyone is so DARN talented, in every way! I’m also one of the babies of the class, so that’s funny!
There are 14 of us, and we’ve become something of a family!
Outside of Rose Bruford, I’ve kept myself busy, with a number of churches. So spiritually, I feel completely refreshed also. It’s nice; drama school feels like a place where God is missing in many ways. But I’m beginning to see Him, in really random, new and beautiful ways.
I’ve spent some time in central London, so that’s cool.
And I went to a cool party with all the other actors, so that was also cool!
It’s all about ‘actors’ only’ parties – because we’re not exclusive! Joke.
My house is amazing! I love it, and I love receiving letters from my friends from afar!
Anyway, I shall now adopt a habit of blogging more frequently, and keeping you updated with my adventures. Take Care!
Today I went to do some shopping for the flat. After a bit of impulse buying in Zavvi, H&M and TopMan, I reluctantly headed towards Sainsburys. It was busy as anything and with only 30 minutes before closing and queues circling round the store, I wished I hadn’t taken so long to get there. I picked up as much as I would manage to carry home by myself, taking into account I already had two bags. After queuing for over 10 minutes I was finally served at the till and it was the attitude of the person serving me that really got on my nerves.
After I had paid, I struggled to pick up all the bags in a way I could comfortably carry them home. This guy just stood there looking at me as if I was holding him up from something majorly important. At this point, he turned to his colleague on the next till and said, quite audibly,
“Bloody students, they’re everywhere.”
At which my reaction was to give him a rather dirty look and direct choice words at him in the privacy of my mind. Looking barely 20 himself, he was either an ex-student or hadn’t been blessed with the brains to study for a degree and was merely jealous. The ignorance of some people really gets at me. One of my pet hates, I suppose. It doesn’t take much effort, when you are working in service, to be nice and courteous to your customers.
I have eventually finished reading ‘The Shining’ (Stephen King) and I can only recommend it as an excellent read to anybody. Regardless of the film, it is gripping, deep, scary, horrific and satisfying. My next book is going to be ‘Animal Farm’ (George Orwell) or ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (Anthony Burgess). On an unrelated note, everybody in my flat (me included), has throat infections. The infamous Freshers’ Flu strikes again! I would love to hear how everybody is getting on this year…
The figures aren’t a surprise as images of drunk and disorderly teenagers often grace our screens, and the goverments confused responses have included longer drinking hours, stricter ID-ing and the consideration of a raise of the drinking age to 21. Despite all their efforts, numbers are still shooting in the wrong direction.
Perhaps it is time to tackle the cause and not the effect. What leads people to drink excessively or dependently is not always obvious, but from a stern look at modern lifestyle it is easy to make some guesses. People in the UK work longer hours than any of their western European counterparts. Examinations and assessments are becoming more and more of a factor of stress among young people. House prices soar, price of petrol hasn’t been below the pound in months, securities are threatened by worsening crime on our streets and the MPs scratch their heads over why more prescriptions than ever have been made to alcohol dependent people.
I don’t blame them for hitting the bottle. It’s a reaction I’ve been know to take, and it’s a perfectly understandable one. Life is increasingly stressful. Towns are ever busier, yet communities are falling apart. Where is the church amidst all this? Sitting in a PCC meeting over how much to spend on replastering the walls? Or on their holy high horse looking down at these broken, hurting and lost drunks? Are they showing people another way of living, or are the people who know Jesus living in exactly the same way with exactly the same pressures and exactly nothing to offer?
Community is the key in the post-modern age. Community is what the church of Acts had to offer, and community is the only way forward in the issues facing society. It’s not a magic cure or a plaster over the real wounds, it’s a slow process, easier to erode than to build, but an undeniable calling. Community allows us to be a people, to not be alone, to be one. community means we see who our actions are affecting, community means we see we can make a difference. Community means having people to lean on, community means breaking down walls of division. Community isn’t an ideal, community is a kingdom-value. And we are called to be kingdom-people.
If you have just been involved in a serious accident and you’re in a critical condition, do you want the emergency services to do all they can to save you? A new ‘right-to-die’ card, carried alongside your credit cards and driving license allows you to say ‘no’. A macabre new twist in the pro-choice lobby, who are pushing for the legalising of assisted suicide and the rejecting of 20 week abortion cut-off limits, has made its way into the headlines.
It calls into mind the age old question of when does life begin and end? Many abortions carried out at 24 weeks involve the killing of a baby who could exist outside the womb in new premature baby units. A baby who sometimes has to be killed once induced, a baby that often has to be poisoned before being induced, a baby whose bones have to be crushed in order to be delivered. A 24 week old baby cannot be called a foetus. It is a tangible, quite obviously living human who in other circumstances, for example premature birth, could live. The taking of the life when outside the womb seems an atrocious thought, yet abortion, a clean, clinical term, makes the taking of that life seem to escape ethical scrutiny.
So now too we have the choice of whether we are kept alive on life-support machines, in a vegetative state for what could be years, causing pain for our families and, let’s be honest, filling an NHS bed with a pretty hopeless body. And so, with ‘dignity’ we are empowered to give prior consent to the switching off of our life-support; a ‘right’ that we can not be denied. When does life end? Is a body kept breathing by a machine really ‘alive’? For many, the answer is ‘yes’. Many people do recover from comas. Many people who have laid non-responsive for months or years suddenly become animated at a small stimulus. So how can we definitively know when someone is gone? I have no answers, and nor does the science world.
So, do I wish to carry a card telling the emergency services to ‘STOP, I don’t want to be kept alive on a life support machine’? My gut reaction is ‘no’. I believe that medical advancements like life-support machines are positive progression, enabling many people to overcome horrific accidents and make phenomenal recoveries. So who am I leaving the decision up to? Well, under the new bill, if I do not state clearly in a sort of ‘living will’ then it will be up to the doctors. Which, cynical as ever about the NHS, sounds like they’ll turn me off pretty soon anyway.
Therefore my responsibility in the endlessly more confusing society of ‘I’ve got a right to…’ is to write who I wish to leave the decision to. Someone who won’t lose hope, who will fight to the bitter end for my life, who will try to show that somewhere under it all there’s still a soul in this vessel. But someone also who will not try for ever, who will let go, who knows that if they do turn me off, they’ve let me free to a better place, if I’m not there already. What a responsibility we are called to put on some people.
Today, we (Juiced: the school church) held a special rememberance service for our headmaster Mr Timbrell. It was a really nice time. Just a bunch of us getting together to write letters and prayers. Then we shared in a bit of acoustic worship with Andy on guitar and me on bongos. Also we had a dance by some girls from my CELL group.
In the evening I took my little brother and sister to the theatre to watch a play called ‘Secrets’.
India lives in a large, luxurious house with a mum she can’t stand and a dad she adores, though he hasn’t had much time for her recently. She seeks solace in her journal, which she keeps in sincere imitation of her heroine, Anne Frank.
Treasure lives on the local council estate with her loving and capable grandmother. She is devoted to her nan but lives in fear of having to go back to live with her mother and violent stepfather.
A chance meeting sparks a great friendship between the girls. And when Treasure has to run away to avoid her stepfather, India comes up with a hiding place inspired by her favourite author. India hasn’t got a real Secret Annexe but she has got a hidden attic…
Parts to the show were clearly geared up towards children, but a lot of it was thought provoking.
What really made me sit up and listen was the point when India (a young girl from a wealthy family), when instructed to ‘grow up’, responded: ‘But I don’t want to be a grown up; you can’t trust grown ups’.
I hate the way our Western culture forces children to ‘grow up’ as soon as possible. This is wrong. Children need to be children. When I fully grow up I don’t want to be an adult, like the dysfunctional characters in the play. Retaining the innocence of youth ensures a happy life, I believe.
Today was my final lesson with my voice teacher.
It was an emotional time. Her name is Jacquie Crago, and she’s a bit of a legend. Your typical English theatrical eccentric who works for the RSC.
We had a great chat about me going to drama school. It turns out my course leader, Jeremy Harrison, worked for her ex-husband John Doyle (A west-end and Broadway theatre director) and it was Doyle who inspired Harrison to lead the course. Six degrees of seperation: theatre style! Ha.
In the evening I went to the Blue Coat A-Level music concert as my friends were playing. I particularly enjoyed the works of Grieg! I was very impressed. My life feels like a string of constant classical music concerts at the moment; not that that’s a bad thing!
The day began well. I actually woke up and got out of bed at a normal time WITHOUT being dragged.
I went to the year 13 leavers assembly; it was quite amusing. As I arrived late, I was screamed at (in a joky way) by my good friend Keith (the sixth form chaplain). I was instructed to sit in isolation, under a title ‘latecomers’, much to the joy of my year!
The highlight of the assembly had to be seeing my mates Kathy and Matthew, singing a rendition of a well loved Grease song. Those who know me will tell you I hate Grease, but for this experience, I loved it!
Another highlight was recieving the ‘Best Dressed Boy’ award for the second consecutive year. A compliment but hardly an accolade!
In the evening I went to a resturant in Long Itchington with my mate Kathy and one of Kathy’s mates called Meg. It was her birthday.
We had a great time and had very, very deep conversations about politics, religion, animal welfare and racisim! All over Chinese. Good times.
Meg is very intelligent, very eloquent and put across some very convincing points.
Meg is an atheiest, but we share a lot of views. On reflecting a recent documentary entitled ‘Jesus Camp’ we agreed how disjointed the evangelical church is from the real teachings of Jesus Christ.
On my way home as I was driving, a hedgehog ran into the road. I jumped on the brakes and waited for it to cross the rode safely. Man, I feel like Dr Doolittle. I would have felt bad to see it ran over though.