Mon, Oct. 18
... Wait for the sunshine
Gak!! I think I just lost my entry!! Oh dear. Ah well... try to recreate it the best I can.
I've been on the road with the Great White North Supertour since Friday, basically working as a roadie on the tour. I'm running a camera during the show, manning the RMC booth in the lobby, and basically doing whatever odd jobs need to be done.
It's fun--it's an interesting thing to be a theatre person living in a world of musicians for a week, but it's a good thing, and it's been a really good learning experience for me.
It's funny how similar, and yet how different, artists are. It's like the theatre and music majors at Rocky--everyone else kind of lumped us together into one big group, and we all got so offended at it. Not because we hate the other people, but because we recognize the differences in our art, and other people don't. They just see us all as "artists," whereas we categorize ourselves into actors, musicians, techs, writers, dancers, visual artists...
But really, artists are mostly the same. The lingo is a little different, the names that are being dropped are different, the outward expressions of our art are different, but in a lot of ways, there aren't that many differences after all. I've decided that it's just one big extended family, and we're all cousins. We live in the same world--and it can sometimes be a different one than the non-artistic people live in--but we all see it through slightly different lenses.
It's a good thing to visit the country cousins every now and then--it reminds me of where I come from, and reminds me that there's more of a family out there than just my little circle. But at the end of the tour, I'm glad to get back to my nice cozy little theatre family, and into my nice warm bed back there.
I sometimes think that it's hardest to practice unity with the people that you're closest to. It's easy to look at "Christian unity" with a pastor or an accountant or a missionary or a counsellor or a teacher, and say, "Yes! We're working towards the same goal; we've just chosen different ways to see it play out." It's easy to say that we're unified with someone who's different, because they're no threat.
To say, though, that we're unified with other artists, or with another theatre company, or another group of actors, or even another actor... well, sometimes that's a different story altogether. They infringe on our territory, you know. They might steal our ticket sales, or steal the spotlight, or understand the business just a little bit better. It's easier to be jealous and competitive; more difficult to be truly unified and one in Christ. You would think it would be easier, because we look at life the same way, but sometimes, the politics get in the way of that.
I wish I remembered what true unity looks like more often.
Anyways... Today is our day off, in Caronport, of all places. Talk about the middle of nowhere! It's kinda nice, though. I slept in this morning--trying to recuperate from those 19-hour days--and have just been lazing around, trying to catch up on some emailing and internet work that has slipped far by the wayside in the past week or so. Tomorrow, we're off to Saskatoon; Wednesday, we head to Winnipeg; and Thursday, we tackle the 16-hour drive back to Calgary! Hopefully I'll get another chance to update before Friday, but who knows... the rate we're going, these days aren't leaving much time for anything else.
One year ago today: I'm getting into some really interesting discussions on the NaNoWriMo forums, especially about creativity, from a Christian perspective. It reminds me of my Creativity Tutorial class, except with a lot greater range of people, ideas, and backgrounds than we had in our class. It's interesting, and I'm looking forward to more discussion with them over the next month and a bit.
infinite || abyss
posted at 2:38 p.m.
