Writing camp is... different than I expected, I suppose. But it's not any fun. Yesterday was my first day, but the drama really started the night before. I was more panicked than I've ever been, to the point of tears. Apparently, stress makes me cry pretty frequently. First the algebra state testing. Now this. I stayed up until four thirty in the morning, talking to my friends online and then reading some more of 'Gone With The Wind' until I couldn't keep my eyes open and I gave up. Which meant I got three hours of sleep that night, which meant I was exhausted by the time I'd made it through the impossibly long car ride to George Mason University where the camp was being held. The first day is sort of a blur to me, thanks to the sleep deprivation, but I know that we wrote. A lot. I wrote a character sketch of David Bowie without using his name and then my group's leader made me read it out loud. I don't think anybody else in the room even knew who Bowie was enough to recognize him. But the leader told me it was nice anyway in a similar fashion to the way doctors talk to mental patients.
Today was a little better, 'cept for that we got rear ended this morning. The damage was minimal and neither my father nor I were hurt, as the other car had been going very slowly. It did make me twenty minutes late to camp, though. Today, we were assigned to wander around the campus in small groups and describe some of the people and objects we saw. I went with three or four other girls in the ninth / tenth grade split group I was put in and described a janitor who was sitting dejectedly on a bench a ways away. I think he noticed us staring about midway through our writing, because he started staring too, and it wasn't really a friendly stare. We're meant to write something by Friday that we can publish in the camp's anthology, so we worked on that for a while today too. I have no idea what I'm going to submit; I wrote about a homeless man fishing a book in a foreign language out of a dumpster today, making it totally clear to myself that I had no inspiration. I'm sure I'll find something. There are a great many subjects in this world.
So far, camp hasn't been devastatingly awful. Even if it's not great and it's very emotionally and physically draining. Most of the people there are moderately civil, though there are some that are remarkably crazy and sort of frighten me. It's sort of nice to hear large quantities of other people tossing around odd words and making comparisons to really irrelevent things in the middle of conversations, which is happening a lot there. I don't know if its because we're all kind of insane from writing too much or if it's merely a coincidence. Anywho. Tomorrow will be another stressful day, but I doubt the details of it will be anything of even slight interest.
Fortunately, I still have a little time to myself after returning home each day and eating. I spent most of this afternoon and evening trying to detangle 'Thru The Eyes of Ruby' - my all time favorite Smashing Pumpkins song - on piano by learning from guitar tabs. This had all sorts of lovely complications. For example, the first tabs website I went to neglected to tell me it was in half step down tuning, which is fine and good on guitar, just turn some pegs (I tried it and it sounded nice enough, the riffs for the verse and bridge are pretty easy) and you're done. On piano, I don't know if there's a better way, but I was playing nearly everything in flats, which means lots of annoying black keys instead of the flatter, easier white ones. Yes, I am aware this sounded racist but I didn't know how else to say it. I also faced trouble with the small matter of the riff, coupled with some chords I sorted out for myself sounding nothing like the song at all. Not sure why. Kind of irritated by this. But I can always try tomorrow. Thanks to some music off the internet, I can play the introduction, the only part with real piano, with ease, and it sounds awesome, even if its a pain to read the music.
My best friend convinced me that I need a bass by having a grand time with her's and telling me about it. Well, really, it's not her fault, I've sort of wanted to try playing for a while, but not enough that I actually thought to save up money for it. I'm waiting 'til I have enough to buy an amplifier, and then I'll get myself one and learn to play it! Well, try, at any rate. It's become increasingly clear that I actually have no musical talent, I just have to work really hard and practice a lot and get engaged enough with the music I play to keep going, and then I do all right. Which is sort of annoying, but oh well.
Music as of late has been the CD's I bought the last time my father took me to that lovely place. I got about ten of them, the most notable of which probably being Love Battery's 'Straight Freak Ticket' and Elastica's 'Elastica', which I liked better than I thought I would. I got a Tears For Fears album too, but not my favorite one, Moist's 'Silver', 10 Minute Warning's '10 Minute Warning' and some others. Sadly, there was no Frente. Not even one of their full length discs. Thus, my quest for Frente CDs continues. I've also been listening to some of my favorite artists, ones that I sort of started phasing out of, more - Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots, namely. I've been listening to quite a bit of L7, some Babes In Toyland, and... Britney Spears. 'Blackout' is awesome, I don't care how cracked up she sounds through the whole thing.
That's about all I have to say. I know I'm really boring lately, but this blog was never intended to be entertaining, only a public diary of sorts.
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