Crazy For You

So, I'm sure there'll be a ton of entries like this in the various journal/blog cirlces everyone seems to frequent, but, I guess, I'll add my two cents/final thoughts on the musical in retrospect. You'll have to forgive me -- I just woke up from a nap and might lack my usual wit and intellect. Ha.

It's over. I know it's an overused phrase today, but man. It's over. Watching them tear down the sets today during strike was an intense experience. It's gone. We can't do it anymore. We won't perform that show again. We're all going back to our old, musical-free lives. It's been so long I can't really remember what that is like. I've done a lot of shows at Eastridge. I enjoyed every one of them and defenitly got something out of them, but this year was something entirely different. It was a great experience.

I don't usually -- don't usually care about these sort of things. The sort of things that make people say "It's over," "I can't believe it's over," usually don't matter to me. This matters to me, however. A lot. I'm going to miss it. Not so much the beard. But everything else. It's been quite an experience. I wish I had a better memory of all the stuff that has happened this year. Looking back you sort of wish you had pictures and journal entires of every tiny detail to remind yourself of what happened. In the end it's just the sum of your life. The experiences and how they've left you. You can't really hold on to anything else.

Next year is going to be so different. This is just the start of a series of changes that will be sweeping across us the next couple of months. There have been far too many "last times" this year. Now I've got "last highschool musical" to add to the list. Maybe last musical ever. Who knows what I'll have time for in the future?

Everyone was amazing this year. In honesty, I've never surveyed the cast before and found it so flawless. Everyone did their best, I think, and no one stuck out in a negative way or gave a low quality performance. I don't know if I feel like that because it's the last year or because it's acutally true, but I guess in a subjective sort of first-person way it doesn't really matter. We did what we set out to do even though our faith dwindled a lot at times. I know I didn't have much confidence for this year heading in, but it turned out great. Because we wanted it to. Because we really owned it this year. That's how it struck me, anyway.

I'm too much of a cynic to believe that the friendships we made will stay nearly as strong as they were during the show. I know a lot of people really hope that they do and as alluring and desirable as that sounds I try to be realistic. We spent a lot of time together (many hours of the day, many days of the week, many weeks of the months and months we pulled together for) and it's hard to sustain that level of connection when the time spent together is as drastically reduced as it's about to be. I don't know why I'm saying this. Certainly not to depress or frustrate anyway. I feel like it needs to be said before anyone gets their hopes up or to explain myself or whatever. Speaking personally, I'm just not that consistent of a person. I don't really act the same way for very long and almost never act the same in different company. I like change. I practically thrive on it. Stagnation makes me really uncomfortable.

All of that said, I refuse to belittle what we went through the last few months. Before I was talking about the future, certainly not the past. It was truly just as much as any senior could ask for in a final show. I feel like we really went out on top. I don't mean that next year is going to be bad, I simply mean that we got as much out of the cast this year as we could possibly hope for. This year could not really have been any better. Next year better be good if I'm going to come all the way home to see it.

How great is it to work hard on something with other people and feel accomplished at the end? You just can't duplicate that kind of comraderie. It's fucking sweet.