{"id":1430,"date":"2012-06-06T16:24:17","date_gmt":"2012-06-07T00:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=1430"},"modified":"2012-06-06T16:24:17","modified_gmt":"2012-06-07T00:24:17","slug":"i-remember-glacier-bay-06062012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=1430","title":{"rendered":"I Remember \u2013 Glacier Bay \u2013 [06\/06\/2012]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Everyone said \u201cwhat a soprano\u201d
\nShe should be singing on the stage at the Met
\nEveryone said \u201cwhat a soprano\u201d
\nWhy do I remember what I want to forget?<\/em><\/p>\n

Everyone said, this girl\u2019s gonna make it
\nBorn to the stage, any fool could see
\nEveryone said \u201cthis girl\u2019s gonna make it\u201d
\nWishful words\u2026never meant to be\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe hardest profession in the world\u201d, they told us, from day one, they told us we wouldn\u2019t all succeed\u2026but neither would we fail.<\/p>\n

The power of the written word never ceases to amaze me. They say that scent is the most direct link to our memory, and perhaps they\u2019re right, I know that there are some smells that will instantly snap be backwards to a specific time and place. But a well worded paragraph opens the flood gates even more.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m reading a novel about a group of students making their way through a British drama school. I picked it up as a bit of lark honestly, a guest donated it for the paperback exchange, and when I saw what it was about I thought it would be an entertaining trip down memory lane.<\/p>\n

But it makes me remember a lot of things I thought I\u2019d forgotten.<\/p>\n

The politics, the backstabbing, the feigned cooperation masking the intense competition, yes, all that, that\u2019s a given, goes with the territory, goes with the field.\u00a0 But those memories are dulled with the years that have passed, whether you liked them or hated them, these were 20 people that you went through the deepest recesses of hell (the grief workshop, the image classes, the audition preps), and the highest reaches of success (the showcase, the LAMDA tests, the voice-over cd recordings, the trips to London in the rain at Christmas). I remember things that don\u2019t seem to matter, I remember the first time I was forced into an onstage kiss, (with a woman no less), something I never thought I would have to do let alone be able<\/em> to do, I remember the smell of the theatre first thing in the morning when no one had turned the lights on yet, when there was no one there except me and the ghost that we were sure lived there with us. I remember cementing my hair into curls for the farce, and baking in layers of period clothing in the heat of the summer. I remember slipping and sliding my way to the theatre in the unexpected snow (my village had never heard of a snow shovel). I remember the taste of tea with cream and sugar, in the square on a Sunday morning. Learning how to waitress for the first time in my life, the satisfaction on the night I realized that the hotel I worked for was trusting me to run the upstairs bar for a wedding of 200 people, all by myself.<\/p>\n

I remember practicing pirouettes with my flat mate until my feet felt like they were going to bleed and still not getting it right, hours and hours<\/p>\n

And turn turn turn turn<\/em><\/p>\n

As her hands clapped out a rhythm that I just couldn\u2019t catch, my body is not structured to be a ballerina.<\/p>\n

The pain in my side as the ballet teacher jabbed her finger into my ribs to try to make me stand up straight.<\/p>\n

The thrill of triumph when I spun faster and more accurately than anyone in the whole class at two footed turns cross-corner in the dance studio.<\/p>\n

The flush of recognition as the main dance instructor hugged me and kissed me on the cheek at the end of class and told me that I\u2019d done an amazing job that day.<\/p>\n

The stabs of pain in my right knee as I danced through injury after injury. I worked myself to death for that class, and when the final cut came, I still didn\u2019t make it.<\/p>\n

Baking cookies at 2 in the morning because I couldn\u2019t sleep and I was too stressed out to try and learn my lines for whatever script I was doing the next day.<\/p>\n

Breaking down in the grief workshop because suddenly it wasn\u2019t my classmate lying there on the cold hard table pretending to be dead, it was my mother, or my father, every single person I cared about by turns, that I had been unable to save, unable to get there in time. You think the tears will fight you, but find the right trigger and they don\u2019t. It\u2019s the laughter that fights you. People think it would be grief that would be the hardest, it\u2019s not, it\u2019s laughter, even seduction is easier than laughter, once you learn how to manipulate your eyes, to think of just the right thing that makes them shine in just the right way, once you master that, you can \u2018do\u2019 seduction, but laughter\u2026? True laughter only comes from true joy, and true joy is almost impossible to replicate at will.<\/p>\n

Audition after audition after audition, mock or real, it didn\u2019t matter, both types were equally challenging. Standing in front of a panel of west end directors they brought in for the last image class,<\/p>\n

They said they\u2019d see you again, congratulations Shaughnessy ,they told no one else that<\/em><\/p>\n

Standing in front of the LAMDA examiner, palms sweating, sure that I was going to forget my lines. Only to walk away with one of only four gold medals awarded, the other three winners got uproarious applause, I got only a polite smattering \u2013 looking back I realized that it was because it was expected. No one considered for a moment that I wouldn\u2019t land it. No one except me.<\/p>\n

I remember taking two carry-all bags to the grocery store to buy my weekly allotment of fruit and vegetables and baking goods. To Woolworth\u2019s (it was still open then) for kitchen supplies. The smell of dish soap on my hands as I dunked them in the sink, the leak in the flat\u2019s shower, the broken railing I fought desperately to repair before the landlord noticed it.<\/p>\n

Paperchains made out of brightly colored construction paper at Christmas time, strung so that the flat looked like a kindergardener\u2019s Christmas card. Christmas candles on the mantle-piece. And how proud I was that I, who could bake but couldn\u2019t cook, made my own Christmas dinner.<\/p>\n

The giant Christmas tree in Trafalgahar square where my flatmate and I fed the pigeons and sang carols with the orphans as London glittered in the icy cold. Reaching out to touch the outstretched hand of Peter Pan in the winter chill of Kensington Gardens\u2026people say I look like Wendy in the picture.<\/p>\n

And jacket potatoes. Because that\u2019s all most of us could afford for lunch, both in time and in money. Extra cheese please Graham. He knew us all by name, which isn\u2019t surprising, there were only twenty of us.<\/p>\n

Sitting around a table at the final graduation ceremony, waiting anxiously to see who would bring home the house cup.<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s costume this table is going over\u2026she was only pretending not to care all year<\/em><\/p>\n

Running through the streets in a spice girls costume which gained us first place in the year-end treasure hunt, and probably clinched us that house cup. Playing rounders and feeling the age old humiliation of \u201cwhat\u2019s wrong Canada can\u2019t you hit?\u201d<\/p>\n

So many memories, all tumbled over each other, happy, sad, bittersweet, confusing\u2026mostly confusing. They feel often like they belong to another person, another life, like I\u2019m looking at them from a very very long distance and can\u2019t always relate to them anymore. They hover there in the back of my mind, like so many images in a kaleidoscope, fragmented and shifting, rejoining to form a different whole. I wonder sometimes if what I remember is what really happened \u2013 how much time has shifted the reality of events.<\/p>\n

And I wonder if I really should be reading this book after all\u2026<\/p>\n

Because it reminds me too much of who I used to be\u2026.<\/p>\n

And all the things I \u2026could have been\u2026<\/p>\n

One turning along the way and I would be elsewhere\u2026I would be different\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

Did I mention how much I detest Glacier Bay?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone said \u201cwhat a soprano\u201d She should be singing on the stage at the Met Everyone said \u201cwhat a soprano\u201d Why do I remember what I want to forget? Everyone said, this girl\u2019s gonna make it Born to the stage, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,6,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-flash-backs","category-reflections-below-the-waterline"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-n4","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}