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I drove up to Milwaukee this Saturday to a) get out of Chicago for a bit and b) to see the African Music Ensemble from my college days gone by. The music was fab, and I’m glad I went to go see them one last time, but there were some disturbing bits - namely, that some people have not moved on at all despite graduating various numbers of years ago, and that I am still considered the black sheep of the group. The words ‘drop out,’ ‘left us,’ etc. were thrown around in regard to me. And you may wonder why there were even a significant number of people there that knew me or cared who I was - and that’s because seriously most of the performers were people that graduated in the same year or before me. At one point I was like, “Now, there are still current students in the ensemble, right?” Anyway, I was definitely known as ‘the one who left’ - makes me wonder at what point the Kool-Aid will be brought out. But I don’t mean to be so dismissive - it was a blast seeing people I’d not seen in years and to hear music that is truly spectacular. Weirdly, was able to sing along with heaps of it. Yea for my long term memory. Now we just need to work on getting the short term up to speed.
Tonight I get to go to acting class, where my spirits are uplifted every week, mostly by comments that my teacher makes. One of these last week (directed at me and my scene partner) was: “So, when we have shtick and we add acting, we get shmacking, which is not what we want.” Thanks Tim. He laid into the girl that can’t read or act again, so that was rewarding. I kept trying to meet her partner’s pained eye and communicate the message that this too shall pass. And it did… very, very slowly. And with little to no emotion, clarity, or semblance of a something that you might want to pay to see.
I just ate lunch.
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