Yearlong Song Challenge, Day 122: Allison

Prompt: "You have some fucking BALLS for picking this song for this particular reason"

Selected by Allison

"Never Gonna Give You Up"

Rick Astley

Whenever You Need Somebody, 1987

Wait, come back, I have a point!

Thanks to this blog and being casually sober, I've restarted The Artist's Way. I'm not quite ready to talk about all of that, but I've been thinking a lot about creativity. And in doing the soul searching, putting in the work, filling the well, yadda yadda yadda, I've come to the conclusion that the last time I felt truly creatively fulfilled was in 2008. That was a really long time ago, so that's a bummer. But doing the work means starting somewhere. So that's where we'll start.

In 2008, I wrote and directed a one-act play called Yours, Mime & Ours. A man brings his girlfriend home to meet his family, and his father is a mime. It is not the best thing I've ever written. It's not the funniest thing I've ever written. It's not the most original or unique thing I've ever written. But it was the last time I expressed myself in my most authentic form. No creative venture has lived up to it since. Not even the short film I made two years later, Silent but Deadly, that won the campus film festival. It's also about a mime. I don't know, I had a mime thing in college.

Yours, Mime & Ours was something I wrote for myself. Purely to make myself laugh. I didn't care what the response or reaction would be; it was funny to me, so it was good. I was so confident; I haven't had that confidence in my work since then. I wasn't worried about rejection; my best friend was in charge of putting the collection of one-acts together, so I knew my play would get selected. When I asked him for feedback, he admitted that he didn't even read it. Nepotism is good and okay when it happens to me. Removing the fear of rejection and scrutiny allowed me to be as silly and goofy as I wanted. I stuffed that script with puns, wordplay, and elaborate descriptions of the precise and intricate mime work I needed to see.

The play's finale involved the cast performing an interpretive mime dance to "Never Gonna Give You Up." Rickrolling was just entering the zeitgeist—we were ahead of the curve. The song choice was the only place I sought input. I asked (demanded?) my bestie (and cast member) to put a playlist together of cheesy '80s love songs. She's an expert. At my behest and in support of my vision, she spent hours combing through her iTunes to curate at least 50 options. "Never Gonna Give You Up" was the very first song. I never bothered to listen to the rest of the playlist. I had my answer: the work must continue!

As previously discussed, I'm not a dancer, and I'm certainly not a choreographer. But I can churn out a silly mime dance to a goofy pop song. Each lyric had a precise hand gesture that crudely resembled sign language. It was fast-paced, intricate, and very silly, and we blocked it just a few nights before the show. I put extreme pressure on my small cast (of friends—these were my friends) to learn the dance in just a few days.

Over the years, I have been told on several occasions by several different cast members (including my husband) that I'm not a very nice director to work with. I denied it then, feigned surprise and confusion, but I know I was a bit of a despotic director. I have a very intense devotion to my vision. And in 2008, I was highly dedicated to my craft. Yes, "my craft" was excessively silly, but it was mine. I wrote this just for me. I gave notes, I did not receive them. I did not take outside input. I did not care if the blocking was too complicated. I did not care that my mime did not want to wear face paint. I didn't care that I was asking too much. These actors were merely participants in my vision, and they would have to figure it out.

And they did.

And it was great.

And I never did it again.

And maybe that's okay.

The response to Yours, Mime & Ours was overwhelmingly positive and incredibly short-lived. It was a 20-minute play about a mime—you can't ride that high forever. But for one night, I had a hit. I stood at the back of the theater, with tears in my eyes, basking momentarily in the thunderous applause. Then, I rushed down to the green room to greet my cast and bestow upon them all the love and adoration I had been withholding for weeks. I found Stephan, my future husband and aforementioned mime eschewing facepaint, in the boy's bathroom, hunched over the sink. The face paint I had been adamant that he wear (he was a mime!) had run into his eyes. My god, I blinded my boyfriend. I stood in the doorway, heaping praise upon him, hoping that would take away the sting. I don't remember his exact words as he frantically flushed his eyes, but I know he didn't say, "Thank you so much for pushing me. It was worth it."

Eventually, I took the notes. I sought outside input. I listened to feedback. I want to think I got better in the following years, softer. My shows were not as good, but I think I was a bit nicer. Calmer, more understanding. What does creative fulfillment mean if it comes at the expense of others? Is unbridled creative expression always selfish, or was that just the result of a 20-year-old with too much artistic power? Maybe I just cared less as my time ran shorter. After graduation, when I ran out of opportunities to create, I didn't seek out any more. Coupled with college burnout and major remorse (what is Mass Communication and what do I do with it?), I lost something somewhere. I'm trying to find my footing again. Creating just for me. Without hurting the ones I love. The audience is much smaller now (how many seats filled the Dan Rodden Theater?), but that's for the best.

I gave something up when I said I never would, and I'm trying to get it back.

And I've got some fucking BALLS to end this 1000+ word post on such a cheesy line.