Today I continued with my Spanish poetry side project. There is a poem by Fredrico Garcia Locra called La Cogida y La Muerte. The poem repeats the time of day over and over so that made me think about copying it. This is that and a translation I made.

A Las Dos De La Mañana

A las dos de la mañana

Yo despierto

A las dos de la mañana

Abro mi ventana

A las dos de la mañana

Veo todo.

Veo los pajaros en los nidos,

Dormidos y vulnerable.

Veo la luna y las estrayas

Llenando el cielo con viejo luz.

Y veo el hombre que pasa por mi casa cada noche.

Que hace?

Parado enfrente de mi casa.

Nadie afuera,

Ni un carro manejando.

Cada noche, soló.

No tengo miedo.

Soló tengo preguntas.

Para que esperas?

Es una persona,

Un señal?

Tienes una casa?

Un trabajo?

A las dos de la mañana

Salgo de mi cama.

A las dos de la mañana

Bajo mis escaleras

A las dos de la mañana

Abro la puerta

A las dos de la mañana

Camino a ti,

A las dos de la mañana

Me puedes ver.

At Two in the Morning

At two in the morning

I wake.

At two in the morning

I open my window.

At two in the morning

I see all.  

I see the birds in their nests

Asleep and vulnerable.

I see the moon and stars

Filling the sky with their light.

And I see that man, that passes by my house every night.

What is he doing?

Standing in front of my house.

No one outside

Not even a car passing by.

Every night, alone.

I’m not scared.

Only confused.

For what do you wait for?

A person,

A sign?

Do you have a house,

A job?

At two in the morning

I leave my bed.

At two in the morning

I go done my stairs

At two in the morning

I open my door.

At two in the morning

I walk towards you.

At two in the morning

You can see me.

Revisions

So recently there have been two thing that I have been doing with my script. One major and one minor. The minor change was brought to my attention by Ellen and Jessica. I didn't understand what they were saying at first but now I do. I am too direct when I write. It would be much better if I used word like alcoholic and drunk less, so that I'm not to forward. Now the second thing I am doing is because of what Matt told me on Thursday. My script doesn't really go anywhere. It ends with the same thing it started with. I get that, and I can see how that can be bad. This would mean that I need to make major changes to the three monologues I have so that there can be some change. I have made it so that now Alexa finds our that her father wasn't actually drunk when he died, and soberly committed suicide because he was depressed.  This would mean I would need someone to tell Alexa, so I introduced a detective to be investigating the incident. He will appear in the first scene and last scene, to be that change so that the script doesn't end where it started. This is my new difficulty. Before I had finally come up with an ending I liked, but now I have to change it and that has posed a challenge. I have two options I am debating. One is he tells Alexa and the scene ends before Alexa really gets to react. But then I worry that it would be confusing. I would just expect everyone to know that Alexa would be surprised and that she would see her father differently. The other option is Alexa having more of a conversation with the detective, her understanding all the facts completely and everything is very explained. I personally find this boring, would prefer to do it the first way. Right before the detective enters I have Alexa talking about how she would actually miss him and that he was loved, so it's not like with the first ending option I don't clue that she would see him differently, but I still worry it's not enough.

My Day

So today I basically just made revisions from suggestions I got on Thursday. It was a pretty boring day, nothing really new to report. I really hope to be done by the end of the week, or sooner. My side project hasn't gotten much attention since I started, but I want a least one day a week of Spanish poetry.

I Can't End This Thing

I am having trouble. My last scene is when Alexa starts to understand her father and his problem. It took me two periods today just typing and deleting everything I was writing. It's annoying not knowing how to put words to an idea. I have something to end the script, so I guess I can build off of that and see what comes out, but I have been really passionte about this, so I don't want to settle for "I guess I like it" because then when I'm directing I going to have to listen to the parts I don't like over and over, and be embarrassed when presenting. This is what I have.

ALEXA
It hurts to watch someone die. Addiction is probably the worst way someone can go. You always feel like you could do something. Like there is some switch that you decide to turn one day.

                              Pause.

ALEXA

But there's not.

ALEXA

I get that it wasn't your fault but... but I have the right to be upset. The things you did should have landed you in prison, but they didn't. We let it just happen and you would promise to deal with it. Is this how you decided to deal with it? Drinking to a point where you six feet underground and closer to hell then heaven?

ALEXA

I loved you. Did you know that? I always made it seem like I hated you because I thought that you wouldn't stop if I still loved you as an alcoholic. I never loved that part of you though. I love the father who grilled outside and taught me chess. He was a good person, and he loved me. But over the years I saw that man less and less. Did he die? Did the part that I saw for the last 5 years kill him a long time ago? Or was he fighting back, trying to get rid of it only to have killed himself? 

Observation of Spanish

What I have noticed about Spanish poetry is that the translations don't do them justice. In La Guitarra by Federico Garcia Lorca there is this wonderful section
“Arena del Sur caliente
que pide camelias blancas.
Llora flecha sin blanco,
la tarde sin mañana,
y el primer pájaro muerto
sobre la rama.
¡Oh guitarra!
Corazón malherido
por cinco espadas.”

Which translates to

“Hot southern sands
yearning for white camellias.
Weeps arrow without target
evening without morning
and the first dead bird
on the branch.
Oh, guitar!

Heart mortally wounded
by five swords.”
English can be a beautiful language but doesn't have the natural rhythm that Spanish does. I realize that one of my favorite things in the world is the sound of an old South American lady speaking Spanish. The two sections above may be saying the exact same thing, but when I read it in my head, there is this flow, and this rhythm that the Spanish one follows, and I picture it read by an old lady. The English one sounds dull and lacks a flow. I see this lack of flow in other English poems as well. It isn’t the poet’s fault. I think it’s just the language we speak. I think that for a long time with my own poetry I had wanted it to sound like Spanish because of the flow. I hadn’t realized this because I hadn’t even considered that I was looking for that. I had always been consumed with the idea of making it sound nice. The words just aided the sound, but there was a beat. It was so difficult and even when I did achieve this rhythm it never sounded the way I wanted it to. I realize that I was trying to rip off Spanish in English. But I don’t think that you can rip off Spanish in English poetry. The words in English don’t sound a pretty as they do in Spanish. Right now I think of the word heart. In Spanish heart is corazón. Since not all of you understand the accents of Spanish I’ll walk you through how to say corazón. The “c” is making the normal “k” sound we are used to. The “o” sounds like you singing the letter “o” in a really deep voice. The “r” is rolled. Not everyone can roll their “r” so doing it like a normal “r” is fine. The “a” sounds like the beginning of a written sneeze, “ah-chew”. The “z” sounds like an “s”. The “on” sounds like the one in the word cone. Corazón. If you can say it correctly, in the way I tried to lay out, it sounds melodic. Now if you compare it to heart, heart sounds grotesque. As I continue to read the Spanish poetry, I'm gonna focus on the rhythm and how the words connect, more than what the poets are saying.  

Side

So in Spanish class for the past week, we've been writing poems in Spanish. It was all to lead up to tonight, when some volunteer students decided to read a poem at Spanish poetry night. I volunteered so tonight I am going to the reading. After today, when I got my poem back after approval, I wished I could have changed it. Because I had already handed in what I was going to read, I can't change it for tonight, but I can still change it for myself. This is when I remembered that I had no side project for STAC. So as I was leaving the class I decided to embark in the realm of Spanish poetry. I'm researching poets now and have found a few, one of those who work I am reading is Federico Garcia Lorca a poet who worked around the 1920-30s period. His poems, like I had expected, are very advanced Spanish, but I have been breaking them down to understand, and eventually copy, some of his work. Here is his first piece I am reading. http://allpoetry.com/poem/8512751-La_Guitarra-by-Federico_Garcia_Lorca

Community

On Friday I talked to Ellen who gave me some advice. In my script the father is only seen as a negative figure. At the end I want the daughter, Alexa, to have a moment when she understands her father, but Ellen made me see that showing the dad as nothing but cruel doesn't give Alexa and reason to forgive her father. I had an idea that I wasn't sure of including because it would morph the script a lot. When Ellen told me what she thought of the script I told her my idea because I felt it could fix the problem. What I am now doing is making it so that instead of having the father hurt Alexa, I have a morning after scene where the father is shown more as a human that regrets what he did. The daughter still would see this as nothing and be angry with him, but the audience can see that he isn't in control of his actions and regrets what he does so that at the end, Alexa's forgiving isn't so surprising.

Yesterday I finished reading "How I Learned to Drive". I always read the notes the director and writer have in the beginning of the book and I saw that Mary-Louise Parker, the actor for the television show "Weeds" was the original Li'l Bit. I admire everything about that show, and one of my biggest idols is the creator and writer of it Jenji Kohan, so I just pictured Li'l Bit as the pot dealing mother that Mary-Louise plays on Weeds. What really caught my attention in this play was towards the end of the play there is a monologue, one that I've heard so often because Viviana used it for some audition or something. I really never paid attention to what she was saying but I had basically memorized it from all the times I had heard it. I realize that my monologues for my character Alexa, are very similar in theme to that of Li'l Bit. Li'l Bit says them so calmly, there is no yelling or anger really, which is something that I have trouble with. I easily fall into having my characters yelling at each other, and can't find a way out. Having people yell at each other for ten minutes isn't that entertaining. Fights don't have to be yelling all the time, and being angry at someone doesn't mean that they are always fighting.