huge verbal vomit (PART 2).

[Rachel Peters]

Nobody raised me like this… I don’t know how it got there.

They actually tested me at school, again at the age of 9, for something they called “the enrichment program”, and told me that I didn’t quite make it. This is what stuck with me.

In college my figure drawing prof pulled me into his office, spread my work across the floor, and told me that my work deserved an A, but I didn’t, because I wasn’t trying hard enough. I got a B that semester. I cried like an infant. This is what stuck with me.

You know, sometimes I find myself in, say, a restroom, and I start to think, “Maybe I’m completely schizophrenic and I’m not in this bathroom at all! Maybe I’m actually taking a dump in the middle of a bus terminal!!” …I mean, how would you ever know, right?
Sometimes my life feels like that. How could I possibly be this responsible adult, walking around the big city, having respectable business people actually believing I can DO stuff?? How did this happen? …this responsible adult, with boobs.

I’m not smart enough to do great things. …But I feel like a failure if I achieve anything less than.
I feel like a failure if I don’t win an Oscar. …by next week.
It sounds stupid to read what I just wrote, but I can’t help it.
I don’t know what went wrong… I don’t know how I got like this. This doesn’t feel like the “laid back” me I know myself to be. And this doesn’t sound like the me I am when I’m actually hanging out with people.
I know that I’ll never achieve the things I want to achieve if I’m flipping out on myself like this all the time. Everything I do for a living and all of my interests are based in fun, laughter, magic, entertainment, joy, childhood wonder… THAT is who I feel I was created to be. I can’t produce artwork if I lose that. …I’m not the cynical type. Losing the innocence and love-of-life would kill me.

I just got a short animation job at a studio I love. I hope it helps. I think I need the old 9-5 structure again for a while, and daily interaction with real, live human beings. …Before I cut off my ear and mail it to an ex-boyfriend or something.

This goes so much deeper than the documentary.

Maybe I should just focus on our marionette film for now.

Maybe I should pray. …I’ve been forgetting to do that lately.

Maybe I should stop typing. I think my keyboard is about to short out from tears.

I’ll probably regret having posted this, once I feel better. …but I need an outlet right now.
I know it’s long. Don’t feel you need to read it.

[Rachel Peters]

huge verbal vomit (PART 1)

Today I went down town in TO specifically to see a few certain shows. I got to watch the USA Break Dancers, which was grrrrrrreat. Awesome stuff. I also wanted to see /meet Pyromancer, but had to leave just before his show, due to a minor emotional/nervous… glitch. Not quite big enough to warrant a “breakdown”, but large enough that I can’t seem to focus on much. I am saddened by not having seen Pyro. …and Al. I wanted to see his show too.
…So I don’t know what I’m doing.
I don’t know why I put so much pressure on myself.
It began as thus: One year ago I decided I finally wanted to step into the world of performance on a serious level. I was extremely frightened of it. I thought (and still ponder) that standup was my route, but at the time it seemed far too vulnerable an art form for someone who was as insecure as I was at the time. I was horribly frightened to leap into performance, be it standup or variety (which is often standup plus tricks). Then I had an epiphany. Film I know. …at least animated film. I’m beginning to make a name for myself in the world of animation. Things are going fairly well there. So, what if I made a FILM that explored the world of performance, and worked myself into it, as the narrator and host who’s coming to terms with her own possibly wasted potential within this field? What if I wrote the story so that I’d have to learn from these performer characters, learn about the life, learn about the career, and climax the story with my own attempts (with documented mentorship) to do my own show/fest? This would give me NOTHING to hide behind anymore, and I could pay homage through an art form that I’m confident I can do well by. I’m confident I can pull this off, as a character of this film.
At the time I didn’t know how much I didn’t know. (I’m sure if I had known how much I don’t know, I might not have leapt into it like I did. It often works that way. It takes a little ignorance to have an adventure.) I figured that since I knew animated film, I could accomplish any genre of film. Film is film.
So, I ended up creating one mother of a huge project. It’s doc, it’s animated, it’s comedy sketches… The farther I go into it, the scarier it gets.
Now I have a project that I’ve spent almost a year developing, and absolutely NEED outside help to produce. I’m turning to Hollywood to try to get this thing rolling, because I’ve created a monster.
I’m now seeing all the things I don’t know, and I am sore afeard of many things.
I cannot go into creating something half-assdly. I often end up thinking that everything I make is crap, because I can see that nothing I make is perfect. I’m very introverted and very melancholic, and the more time I spend alone, the harder and harder I get on myself.
I can’t imagine how long this project might take me to create.
Here’s my major angst: NOW I feel ready to perform. I’m not afraid of THAT anymore. It’s really hard to hold back and sit on it for the sake of this film. But I love this film too much to just scrap it, in order to perform.
It’s really hard to go to festival and see people doing what I am SO ready to do. But if I start, I have to completely rewrite the documentary. This film relies on my “coming of age” in performance – learning from you guys, as an outsider – as an observer. I’ve spent too much time and heart (and money) to just trash that story. I feel like I’ve involved too many people to just let it drop. I feel like there are too many kids out there who claim to make documentaries and have nothing but home movies to show for it (if anything), and my stupid pride makes me push so hard to not appear like one of them. …Like the monthly pnet post of “Hi, I’m making a documentary…” I don’t want to be that. I’m NOT that.
So, I wait on the film to get picked up. (To be honest, I’m only going on to prospective producer #2 so far. It’s just a slow and sensitive networking process) …But what if nobody wants it? How long do I sit on this and let my desires to perform fester?
I know I could do other forms of performance that wouldn’t interfere with my doc. I could do theatre. I’m thinking through that.
…I’m spreading myself far too thin. I’m an animator. I don’t want to lose that. I just want too much out of life. This is just scratching the surface. …Honestly, I recognize that what I want is more than this world has to offer.
It’s like I’m doing the dishes when I realize that I have to put the laundry in the dryer, so I get half way to the washing machine, when I remember that I need to take out the garbage. Then the doorbell rings, and half way to the door, with a fork in one hand, a garbage bag in the other, and a fist full of wet clothes, I decide to call someone on the phone………… by the end of the day I’ve achieved nothing, and the place is a big, old mess. That’s how I feel I’m spreading myself.

Ok so, what if my doc. just sits, waiting for a producer? Without my $2000 Canon GL1 pro-sumer camera in-hand, what am I in the world of variety performance? I’m a glorified groupie (that is, if I were to think of myself as “glorified”). If I’m waiting to perform for the sake of the doc., and the doc. isn’t noticeably moving forward… I have no excuse to be here. The doc. is what I came here for, but now I really want to stay.
I know too much to be just an audience member, but I can’t really be a performer (waiting on the doc). I’m somewhere between both worlds, and not satisfied at all.
But meanwhile, I’m an animator. I don’t want to lose that.
I’ve been working on developing another short film (sort of animated), and it has been slowly progressing. It’s a day-in-the-life of a cynical, stilt-walking mime, and it’ll be made of green-screen composited Zimmerman puppets. It’s going in a good direction, so maybe I should focus on performance-influenced art, that I KNOW I can accomplish to some degree of success, without having to sell my soul to Hollywood. (I’ll just have to sell my soul to Zimmerman, that’s all. I can deal with that. He gives me good rates.)
…But that doesn’t solve my “can’t perform until this thing takes off” problem. Either I start doing shows and rewrite the story from scratch, or I wait… and feel like a permanent outsider, who had no excuse to be here and has nothing to contribute.
…I cry at festivals now. I’m a mess.
I want to wait for the film. I love this film.

I’ve been a late bloomer in many things in life.
It wasn’t until I was about 9 years old that I could make it through a day of school without bawling. 9 was about the age where kids would probably have started beating me for crap like that. And 9 was when I started at a really rough school.
You know, I’m still trying to come to terms with the fact that I own a pair of boobs, let alone that some men might look at them sometimes. …in fact, I’m in complete denial. They don’t. Shut up. …They don’t.
Somehow I missed that point – that day, that hour, that minute – when I turned from a shy, 5 year old, thumb-sucking kid, into someone who looks and sounds like a grown up. But I still FEEL like that shy, 5 year old, thumb-sucking kid and I keep forgetting that people don’t see that in me anymore. Part of me wishes they would see that in me. Now when I say, “I’m going to do this cool thing.” People actually believe me, and don’t seem to have any doubt that I can accomplish the given task to the fullest extent of which I’ve claimed. …That scares the ever-lovin’ hell out of me.
(which is probably a good thing. I mean, I don’t really want hell IN me.)
But it near paralyzes me sometimes.
When I was a kid and I accomplished something great, it was a pleasant surprise to the adults.
Now, in order to pleasantly surprise those people, I have to push SO much farther.
Maybe they don’t expect this of me at all. …Maybe I’m the only one who expects this of me.
Regardless, for some reason, I fear backing out of almost anything I’ve committed to.

Take note: this is the aftermath – the inner workings – of the child who never quite reached prodigy status. The child who, with proper training and a monetarily privileged upbringing, might have. The child who lives with the regrets of “maybe I just didn’t try hard enough.”

[Steven Ragatz]

Lexapro

Steven Ragatz

[martin ewen]

http://www.rainbowpuke.com/

http://www.yonkis.com/mediaflash/unmillon.htm

[Rachel Peters]

thank you.
i only got to 10447.

[Mr.Taxi Trix]

Any chance you can manage to get to a third world country for awhile? (and not get inspired to do a documentary, that is?) It helped me.

[Rachel Peters]

whoa... I've really wanted to for a long time. I've been keeping the thought of working at an orphanage in the back of my mind, when I have the means to support myself. I met the right people at a wedding in May. I really want to.
...I've got to prepair myself to come back to Canada with an armful of children. I don't know that I'd be able to leave them there.
Bringing the camera is a must.
I'm applying to Stanford for an MFA in Doc. I wrote this stuff into my Statement of Purpose.

Where did you go?

[Mr.Taxi Trix]

Burma, Mexico (is Mexico third world? Parts of it feel like it) Thailand, Cambodia, Laos.

I've loved these times, and I've lived there for months at a stretch, (My partner Terri's done years in India) I've performed for people who will see what I showed them only once in their lifetimes. That was cool. The most interesting thing is that these people, insanely "poor", are far happier, more present, more alive amidst this suffering, than all us rich folk manage.

It is a healing time, but not for any reason I know. Those observations above are just that. I imagine working for orphans would be brilliant. And I do relate to your struggle, by the way. I'm headed to Mexico for October, working on a new act at Sigfrido's workshop, as insecure and uncertain as at any point in my life.

[Richard]

Nothing like seeing how good we have it.

[scot]

I hope I have a PNet breakdown one day just like rumple, that music guy and rachel.

[Rachel Peters]

My parents just got back from India not too long ago. It's definately a place in need of people who care. The gap between rich and poor is enormous. I've had other friends also tell me that never have they been to a place where the people are so raw and genuine, as India. And if I ever brought a few kids back from India, at least they'd have a rich culture in Ontario to be a part of. ...harder to find raising, say, Ethiopian children.
But I get heat stroke in Canadian weather, so I think India would be a really tough place for me, physically.
Cambodia's been stuck in my mind as well, for the amount of child sex trade survivors. I know there are many countries I could go to for this. ...which his sad.
What kind of work was Terri doing in India?

One of my animation mentors made a short cartoon for Street Kids International. It was a wonderful example of using one's own personality/skills for a greater cause. It was for street kids to watch, on the topic of what Aids is and how to prevent it. It ended up getting an Oscar nomination. Crazy big circle, from volunteering in South America to the red carpet.
So, yeah. Wow. Refreshing to hear that I'm not insane or alone in these thoughts.
I think, if nothing else, the public breakdowns are good for having others comfirm that you're just human.

PS: I'm working now. It's a good place and a decent job. 2 weeks of guarenteed work, and a producer just asked me to take a stop-motion test, to try to sneak me into the next project, as an animator. So, maybe I'll be able to afford to boss Lee and Martin around soon.

PPS: Someone just told me that there's another fire eater here. I need to meet her.

Scot, I hope you can have a breakdown too. It's sort of like an emotional enima.

PPPS: This is a great studio, but it's called Cuppa Coffee, and they follow through on their name by providing lots of really good coffee. ...not the best for my current anxiety, or my already firm addiction.

Richard, tell me your story! (the pics)

[Richard]

OK
These photos were taken in March '06 in a remote Mexican village, Tepetlampa. It's in the mountains several hours SE of Puebla. The missionary had never been to this village before. I was invited to go because they thought I'd be a good ice breaker, so to speak. Our mission was to build a soccer field. Basically moving soil from one side of the mountain to the other. We spent six days there.

There's no roads that go to Tepetlampa. The nearest real town is over an hour drive away on 4X4 road. Then an hour walk down a steep mountain. Wheel barrels, shovels, soccer equipment, and personal items had to be carried in by mule and backpack.

Obviously, people don't migrate there. You're born there and for whatever reason don't/can't leave. I've never been to prison, but my guess is people in our prison system have it better then these people do. At least in prison you know you're going to eat every day and have a dry place to sleep. Yet compared to other places in the world people in Tepetlampa have it pretty good. At least Tepetlampa has a soccer field with a great view!

A trip like this might be good for you Rachel.

[Rachel Peters]

Originally posted by Richard

A trip like this might be good for you Rachel.

Agreed.
Good for anyone, I think -- stepping outside one's own head.

I'm a missionary kid (an "MK", as we call them).
I think it's in my blood to do.
I will, eventually.
Timing.

[martin ewen]

I've had a breakdown and I'm not human. Just to clarify.

[Rachel Peters]

Originally posted by martin ewen
I've had a breakdown and I'm not human. Just to clarify.

I'm sorry, that was a typo. I didn't mean, "human". What I meant to type was, "a pretty, little pony named 'Honey Bunches Sugar Lumps', with sparkles on its bum."

Sorry about that.
My bad.

Sincerely,
Honey Bunches Sugar Lumps.