1000 Recordings

Have you ever heard of a book called 1,000 Places to See Before You Die? Its a fascinating "traveler's life list" first published in 2003 and has inspired several spin-offs including books, calendars and even a board game and a TV series. Both of my sets of grandparents have done extensive amounts of traveling in their life, and have ended up using the book as the final fill-in of their lives. Apparently its the new traveler's textbook, and a pretty big thing.

Now the same people that brought you 1000 places, have brought 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. I first saw it on a shelf in a bookstore a couple weeks ago, and was totally enthralled. Ive done some more research, and it has gotten me really excited.

Coupled with a recent viewing of Julie & Julia, I feel some kind of resolve to be sure to listen to all of these recordings; I mean, why not? Im a sound designer, if Im going to be any good at what I do, shouldnt I have listened to all of these, be articulate in them, and able to use them at any moment, for any show, at any theatre?

I cant promise I can do it all in a semester (part of me dreams of being able to make it an independent study course), or even a year. But (as of this moment) I do feel like I wont be complete and any good at all until I can get this done. I also cant promise that each listing will produce its own blog entry; I have no clue what kind of effect each of them will have on me, or at this point how and in what order Im going to attack this list. The site allows one to browse by (album) title, artist, "featured recordings" (which doesnt seem to have rhyme or reason), or by genre (there are 15). Heck, I cant even promise a single blog entry on my experience.

Like I said, the toughest challenge seems to be in what order to I try to do this? I think my first step will be to find some kind of list that I can highlight and find out for sure how many of them I am already familiar with. A couple dozen maybe? My next step, I figure, will be to try to cross reference the list with another list (or two) that I already trust, one that has put recordings in order of importance: The Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (and the 500 Songs; perhaps I might even dabble in the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs, as well as the 100 Guitarists. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame also has a list of The 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll that Id love to use; now if only I had a database, a sortable list of all of these albums that could easily be cross referenced--then this part would be so much easier) that would make picking an order of importance the most plausible plan of attack. But cross-referencing (all of) these lists proves to be daunting enough; making an attack list seems extremely difficult; getting through it in a way that I can be satisfied seems endless; writing about it, while it would prove fun, noteworthy, and worthwhile, comes across as nearly impossible.

But we'll see. If by some glorious miracle I was able to do one every single day, that would take well over two and a half years. Im sure if I could add every single one of these albums to my collection I would have a collection worthy of awe the world over. But for now, getting my hands on them is hard enough, and my ears listening to them challenging. But I just cant see my self doing it if I cant "do it right." If Im going to do it, I want to do it all the way, and the right way. I want to listen to each album more than once, probably more than twice. It would take me several times through before I can feel like I am fully conversant in it. Honestly, who knows how long it could take? I dont even have the book in my possession yet.

Im going to go look at these lists now, maybe by tomorrow I can come up with some kind of plan, see some kind of progress, make some kind of list, get some kind of motivated, form some ounce of desire, see some kind of ending, and know some kind of path.

I Feel Like My Future Happened Today

Ive been working with Kyle Hatley on this audio theatre project called Surfacing. Kyle is one of the greatest theatre artists I have ever had the pleasure of working with. He is talented, articulate, and has a great way of being able to make me smile by lightening the situation with a funny remark just as it starts to get stressful. He is the new Assistant Artistic Director for the Kansas City Rep. Which means he assists all the Directors for the rep, and is the eyes of the Artistic Director, Eric Rosen, when he cant be around.

Eric Rosen was hired last year to be the new Artistic Director, and has done some incredibly great things for the Rep. Every show they have mounted this year has been spectacular (with the exception of A Christmas Carol, which was good, but definitely needs an overhaul) and some of the best theatre I have seen anywhere. And Mary Zimmermann was his mentor, so he has a lot of talent, and a terrific eye, not to mention some incredible theatre contacts. There's a story going around about how Eric got hired. Apparently the board of directors was really on the fence about this guy. He's edgy, new wave, and would probably bring in unfamiliar faces, but would be able to do some amazing things that they just didn’t know if they for sure would be comfortable with. Then someone on the board, and no one will say who, finally said look, someday this guy is going to be the face of American Theatre in the 21st century. He will be on the cover of every theatre magazine, and he will go on to bigger and much better things; do you want his bio to have said that he worked here? And that's when they decided to go with him.

And Kyle is Eric's protégé. Mary Zimmerman : Eric Rosen :: Eric Rosen : Kyle Hatley. Kyle is 27, and brilliant. He first started running his own theatre company when he was 24 or 25. He has such an incredible future ahead of him, and just like Eric, will probably be running his own major theatre company within ten years. And right now he is developing his own list of theatre contacts, and I want to be on that list. I want to be one of those guys that he calls on to design for him. Before I ever started working with him and just liked hanging out with the guy, Angela Cristantello (whom I love, is one of my top ten favorite people in the world, and would trust with my professional life) I once overheard saying to Kyle, "I will do any part you ever ask me to do." I wasn’t aware but later found out that they had only worked together once on one small project, and here she was basically worshiping at this guys artistic feet. And if she was willing to do that, I knew he would be worth working with and trying hard for. I now know what that’s like.

Its like Kyle is also the semi-official KC Rep ambassador to the students. He is the same age as most of the grad students, so he associates himself with us. When most people meet him, he is introduced as the Assistant Artistic Director for the rep, and so most people start off a little intimidated by him (at least I did, and I know that there are others that have felt that way too at the outset); after all he is not exactly in the same station as we are, he is a little more elevated than we are. But he doesn’t like being thought of like that. He doesn’t want there to be a disconnect between us and him, and just wants to hang out. He likes to drink beer as much as a grad student, and one could imagine that this is the equivalent of his graduate training. One of the perks that Kyle has with this job is that he lives in (the basement of) Eric's house. Eric has this huge, really nice house about 40 minutes north, on the edge of a lake. When Kyle moved in he was amazed, and almost in passing mentioned how he could throw some parties there. Eric replied that, yes, he should definitely throw parties there, but only while he was out of town, and he never wanted to know anything about them.

At one of those parties last year, where I first got to know Kyle a bit, he and I started talking about this audio theatre project he wanted to do some time next year and that it would be great if I would work with him on it. He tells me about this online community audio theatre company he founded called Chatterbox Audio Theatre, and has been Artistic Director of it for a few years. He tells me about a lot of the things they have done, and some of the new things he wants to do in the future. He talked about it in such a way that, for some reason, I kind of ignored what he was saying. I kind of thought that there would be no way such things would ever happen, I mean, he did leave everyone back in Memphis to come and work in Kansas City. I briefly mentioned it to Tom, my sound advisor, and he has been into it; he'd been in contact with Kyle and had mentioned it to Tom. Apparently, Kyle is really excited for this idea and has his heart set on doing it. Tom, who has a story for everything, likes to talk about a lot of these audio theatre projects he used to work on back in the day, and how he likes to listen to the audio theatre channel on his XM satellite radio station. He started getting a specific ideas for what he wanted to do, and it wasn’t till the beginning of this school year before things started falling into place and this audio theatre project actually started going forward.

The project is called Surfacing and at that party last year, he started telling me about his ideas and concepts for the show. It sounded like a cool project, but when I first heard the script I was totally blown away. He is a really good writer, he has some amazing imagery and fantastic character development. He does get a little freaky in the head sometimes, with some totally weird and crazy events happening (if you thought some crazy stuff happens in Episode one, that's nothing compared to the whacked-out crap coming out of this guy's head in Episode two). I often wonder how one mind is so capable of coming up with some creepy, totally nuts ideas.

Kyle is also an amazing director. I like to make the comparison to him by using Barry Kyle. Barry will put on a good show. He will have some spectacular images on the stage by opening. He has the ability to bring out every ounce of talent inside you, talent you didn’t even know you had, but makes you fell like you suck every minute of it. He makes you feel like you're worthless and have no talent at all, but at the end of the day you have done some amazing things. Kyle Hatley, on the other hand, can do the same thing, but make you feel like youre incredible instead. He makes you feel really good while bringing out the best in yourself. When he pulls talent out of you that you didn’t even know you had, you gain a lot of confidence in your skills and feel like you could take on the world. And I couldn’t care less if I impress Barry Kyle, I don’t care if what I give to him is good or not, but with Kyle I always want to do my best, he has a way of facilitating that, and has the kind of theatre network that I want to be a part of. And in contrast to Barry, I think Kyle has much more (long-term) ability to get me acutal professional jobs in the future, and for the rest of my life, and that also motivates me.

So knowing all of that, I have told myself that I can never tell Kyle no. I want to impress him every moment that I work with him. I want to make sure that every second of audio that I put out is the best thing he has ever heard. And he has the ability to pull that out of me. I am completely motivated when I work with him. I want to be his go-to sound guy, and in order for me to get there, I know that I need to make the best sound of my life in the mean time. Plus, I know that Eric Rosen is going to be listening to this some time. Nothing I ever give Kyle can be sub-par, because if I ever want to work for KC Rep, which I consider one of the major regional theatres that I want to design for someday, I need to impress both Kyle and Eric. And I think it's working. Episode one was amazing, and having just finished (most of) the recording sessions for episode two, I can tell that it is going to be exponentially better. And by the time the third one comes out, we will have something totally triumphal completed that it will be a really nice completed package that will look really good in my resume and be a shining example of the work all of us have done. I totally imagine it getting me jobs in the future.

Ive started to compare sound design to sculpture, partially out of an example Tom likes to draw using stone and clay as two different approaches. For me, it's like I used to like to make little hand-held objects out of clay; then Kyle asked me to design Mount Rushmore, and somehow I agreed. Episode One was Teddy Roosevelt: kinda hidden back there, not that important, but still a huge thing, and when it was done became the biggest awesomest sculpture in the world. Episode Two is Jefferson and Washington. Pretty much twice the work, much more important (I mean the importance of those two far out shine Roosevelt), and there they are right out front, hard to hide. Episode three is going to be Lincoln. By now generally regarded as the greatest American President (mostly because both Republicans and Democrats ("if Lincoln were alive today, he would be a Democrat") like to claim him, but that is neither here nor there) and probably has the most amount of detail. This is a gigantically huge project, I used to like to make little 5-10 second (or less) sound effects. This is a 50 minute way long sound effect, times three! I have to get every second of every minute just right. And every moment I spend working on it outshines every other moment Ive ever spent working on anything else.

I did episode one on Pro-Tools, with some very basic FX plug-ins, called Digi-Rack, cheap stuff that anyone can get their hands on. But as soon as I was finished with it, in one of my Sound Design courses we started learning about super-advanced plug-ins called the Waves Bundle. It’s a dozen or more digital effects processors that cost something like $2,500 dollars for the whole package, are super detailed, still much easier to work with, and make everything sound so much better (especially with the right training, which Im getting in class). So I decide that I would do Episode Two on Waves, and from the first time I used one to make a vocal chorus, it totally blew me away and I knew that the whole episode was going to be far and away so much better. I did, however, start to worry about keeping all three episodes on a unified equal footing. It just means I have to find a way to make Episode Three that much better as well. If One was a 5, and Two is a 10, then for Three, I have two choices, either a 15 or a 20. Im still looking for ways to reach that much better. Lincoln has to look really nice.

From the beginning of this project, our schedule has been to release Episode One at the end of January, Episode Two at the end of February, and Episode Three at the end of March. Kyle first told me it was because they have been promoing the heck out of this thing, and they want to submit it to all kinds of audio theatre awards. Later, as we are releasing Episode One, and talking about future release dates he mentions these awards again, and I want to know more about them. He tells me that there are a bunch of them, but really only one that he really wants to win. Its called the Mark Time awards. The way I remember him saying it, there are a bunch of them that we will submit them to, and a lot of them we have a real shot at and some big awards that would be nice to win, but "I want that f@&#ing Mark Time award!"

I look up the Mark Time awards, and find out that his major project from last year, The Dead Girl, which was also a series in three episodes, won the silver last year, and it’s an award that he has been pursuing for much of his life, and coming in second, to him, was not so much a let down for him as it was a way of saying that it its definitely attainable for him. Kyle talks about The Dead Girl a lot, what kinds of things they did for it, so I know a lot about the show; its very similar in genre and style to Surfacing. So we talk a lot about them in comparison. Both are really good, and both are popular. He tells me how great it was for Chatterbox to have that kind of exposure and how it has been their most popular show online to date, and the Mark Time awards was a major part of that. And these days he's telling me that just episode one of Surfacing is far surpassing The Dead Girl. Some people say its because its better, but I like to think its because those involved have a much bigger network. We are all grad school students, with friends literally all over the country, and facebook has been an incredible tool for sharing. One of my friends, the girlfriend of someone in the show, is also in grad school in New York City. After she heard it, she posted he link on her facebook status, and said how great it was because it gave her nightmares (I replied that both Kyle and I take that as a compliment). I just think with so many of from all over the country, we have a much wider net to cast, and that has been a better tool for Surfacing than it was for the Dead Girl, which was done with a bunch of people essentially from one single community.

Now I'll admit that I havent heard The Dead Girl at all, and its because of the way I was first trained. I don’t want that piece to have an effect on how I would do this show. I don’t want to in any way recreate what they did. When I was in high school we did a production of Evita a few years after the Madonna movie was released. My director, and first mentor, never saw it because he knew he wanted to direct it someday and didn’t want to let that dictate or even in the least way affect how he would do it. And that’s how Ive approached the Dead Girl. Im sure its great and everything, but I don’t want it affecting my style and design choices. I will definitely listen to it, but not until after Im done with all three episodes of Surfacing.

So with more traffic on the Chatterbox website than ever, and more plays and downloads of Episode one of Surfacing than any other piece has ever gotten, expectations for this thing have gotten pretty high. Ive got some huge pressure from myself and dozens of others to get this thing right. And for a number of reasons I want to put out a good product. Plus the fact that Im learning a lot about digital signal processing right now, and some of the tools to use to make audio tracks sound better, that will, in fact, make the next episode even better than the first. But I am also a stickler for continuity among the episodes. So now, with exponentially better tools than I used on the first episode, I start to worry about there being a disconnect on the second and third. I know I could just make it better, but I also want them all to sound good next to each other. So that’s another pressure Ive got on me. And the schedule is tight. It took about 90 hours of post-production to put the whole episode together. I might be able to shave 8-12 off due to experience and all the time I spent coming up with presets and over-all settings. We wont get all the recording done until a week before the end of the month, and its possible to get it all done by the end of February, but it will be tight, nerve wracking, and stressful. The amount of time I have to do the whole thing is severely limited.

Kyle has this great way of often coming up to me with bad news. What happens is I see him in the halls of the PAC, or I walk past his office, or we see each other at some social or official function and we talk about how the project is going. We discuss whatever the next step is: rehearsal, recording, editing, planning etc. Then he will say something like, "Okay, Ive got some bad news." And since the guy has a whole lot on his plate, and this whole thing is a total logistical nightmare, I know that something fell through. He has to make a re-write, we have to record something else, someone cant make it to the session or we have to otherwise re-schedule a session, he wants to trim minutes off, or whatever. But before he can tell me, I pause, sigh, and close my eyes. He says, "tell me when your ready." I take another second and realize that something is coming, and the sooner I know about it the sooner I can react and move on. "Alright, go ahead. What is it?" And he knows he is going to let me down so he does it with a little bit of a smile. I react, either get pissed off, or whatever, and end up shrugging it off and say something to make him think that we can work through it. Cause I want to make him happy, that’s pretty much my first and foremost job here, for my sake and the sake of my future career, keeping Kyle Hatley happy, inspired, and driven is the most fundamental responsibility I have.

But this time, he comes up to me and we go through our bad news ritual, and he tells me that the Mark Time Awards have had a budget cut and they have moved the deadline from April 1st to March 1st. So now I have to take an already way-too-compressed schedule and do twice as much work. Thanks. He tells me that last year they were in a similar situation with the Dead Girl and what they did last time was they submitted the first two episodes and the script for the third one; then they submitted the third episode a couple weeks later after they finished it. Kyle said that the Mark Time people were okay with that last year (but if you ask me, I think its highly likely this was the reason they only ended up taking second. I think its possible that since they didn’t turn it in on time they couldn’t give them the gold), and might be able to cut us the same kind of deal this year since they kind of screwed us on changing the date. I mean after all, you cant tell the film community that the new deadline for the Oscars this year is November 31st, instead of December 31st, and make the announcement on October 1st. People who had a deadline to reach all of a sudden have to fast track everything, or delay their release date, then your not getting the highest quality work, which is what the awards are all about anyway. Maybe if you told them in October that the deadline for next year would be a month early that might work, but you cant go and make a huge change like that. So Im a little annoyed by that.

A couple weeks later Kyle brings me a new set of bad news. He says he spoke to his contact at the Mark Time Awards, and the new deadline is firm. They just don’t have the resources. But the guy had listened to Episode One and says that it’s the best thing that he's heard since hes been with the Mark Times and is really excited about the next two episodes. His suggestion was take the time, do it right and submit it for next year. And this is kind of what Ive been thinking for a long time, and trying to convince Kyle of. I mean, here we are with less than a week left before he wants to get it posted, and Im trying to tell him, there's two ways to do this: there's quick and on time, or right. I can get it done on time if I throw it together, but it wont sound as good. The other option is I do it right, take the time; I can get it done, but honestly I don’t know how long it will take. Tom used the old conundrum: you have three options, Quick, Cheap, and Good; pick two. He's already getting cheap, and only has one option left.

When I did the first episode, it became my personal design project for the semester, so I had to push to quickly get a rough cut done before the end of the semester. I gave one copy to Tom Mardikes, my sound design profesor, and one copy to Kyle. After they each went over it, Tom, who as done a bunch of audio theatre in his career gave it back to me and said, nicely done, good job, A. Kyle gave it back to me and had 6 pages of notes. I was glad it was Christmas break, so I had lot of time to do a lot of work on it and get the project done. I thought I would go through 4 or 5 versions, with the edition I gave tom and kyle both being version 1. That’s just the way Kyle works. We go through scenes in recording like that, and that’s about how my ability to thoroughly go through and fix all of his notes. We also did a version 1.2, 1.3, Version 2 was completely different, and I made some other changes before I gave him version 2.1, which he approved. I was totally surprised, "yeah, lets post it!" He said he was completely satisfied and impressed with the way I was able to fully implement all of his notes, which made me feel good. I didn’t have to do a whole lot and Episode 1 was done.

Tom eventually heard the finished version of episode one and he said that it was the best piece of Audio Theatre he'd ever heard or participated in and that it will get me jobs for the rest of my life.

My goal through this whole process has been and still is to always impress Kyle. I can never tell him no. I cant ever give him anything that he wont be satisfied with. I want him to be able to open doors for me in the future. Some day he is going to be running his own major theatre company, and I want to be one of the guys he calls on and counts on when he needs a good sound guy. And he's my age, which means I could work for him for the rest of my life, and Id be just fine with that too.

I have spent a lot of time in the process working with him and discussing the process, what our plans are, how to make them better. We have a lot of long conversations during recording sessions, or moments I walk past his office on the 4th floor. We talk about design approaches, technical tools available, recording schedules, script changes, character breakdowns, scene orders, editing notes, and release dates, among many other tHe wants great work so he shares with me a lot about what he's thinking and the entire vision for what he wants for the show. I feel like he trusts me with something that is extremely important and personal to him. And I want to impress him, so I give him everything Ive got. We have a great professional relationship. He sends me texts saying that I am an amazing artist, and how awesome, and brilliant I am. I like to think that my plan is working, and not that I have sinister intent, but that Im being successful at doing what I want to do, and in such a way that makes me feel like Im good at my job. Kyle is great at that. He has often said to me that he is really glad he gets to work with me for another year.

One day Kyle says to me, stroking his beard all curious like, "do you graduate this year?" I respond that, no, I have another year after this one. Slyly, he responds "Oh, gooooood… Cause I have some crazy ideas about what I want to do next year." I get a huge bulging-eye look and he grins. After all, at the time I wasn’t even halfway through the huge Surfacing project, and already he is making plans for next year. I start to get a little overwhelmed. He later tells me that he came up with a great idea for the project that what he wants to do next year. "I want to do Moby Dick in ten episodes." And I just about have a heart attack. Wow, that’s a way to dump a heap-load of pressure on someone. "don’t get me wrong, that sounds like an incredibly great project to work on" but it is just too huge. Reasons why it would never work: 1) we have a hard enough time trying to align schedules to get three episodes to work 2) editing 10 episodes would kill me 3) I havent done enough work on oceans to know how to do something like that; and 4) (and this is probably the biggest one) I have done a little bit of ocean atmospheres to know that our sound library doesn’t have nearly enough effects to cover 10 hours ocean sounds (after all, if Kyle thinks he can make it work, decides he wants to do it, commits to it, and puts his mind to it, Kyle will make it happen). He tells me that wouldn’t it be great if we could get Walter Coppage, Mark Robbins, Gary Neal Johnson, or Gary Holcombe to play Ahab and Ishmael? Yes, that would be awesome and I would love to do it; "I'll tell you what. You come yachting with me and help me record ocean sounds for a week this summer, and I'll do it." Kyle smirks and replies, "We might be able to get some grant money to make that happen." And inside I shudder and (once again) wonder what Ive gotten myself into. A couple weeks later (after Kyle found out what the KC Rep season is going to be next year), he tells me that he realizes that its just not going to happen, and I breathe a huge sigh of relief. Ever since then we've been using "Moby Dick in ten episodes" as a way of joking about how overwhelmed and overscheduled the both of us are. Every time he says that he is just too busy, I say, "you know what you need in your life? You need to do Moby Dick in ten episodes." And we both laugh.

One of the best parts about working with him is getting all of the inside information about what is going on with the Rep. Little by little I love getting little tid bits of info. I love having facts before anyone else. And the more Kyle trusts me, the more he is willing to share with me, or the more he slips and shares stuff he shouldn’t. More often than not though, he stops himself and says that he cant talk about it. But half of the great part is that the things he is willing to share most people don’t know anyway. A perfect example is this rumor that is running around, Kyle confirms: he dances around it, knowing full well he cant say it all, "No, I cant say that; let me just say… Well its no secret that both Eric and I really want to do a co production with the university grad students next year." Now, maybe a lot of other people knew that, but I had no idea. That is incredible, to me. I know a lot of professionals that if they were in that situation would want to sever even more ties between the company and the university. So to see someone like Eric, and of that calibur, want to go out of his way to do a huge thing like that seems unfathomable to me.

So, knowing that a co-production is a high possibility, Ive waited for just the right situation(s) where I can plant the right seeds, and get the right info. If it does happen, I suppose there would be two possibilities that would have an impact on me either they choose to bring in a professional sound designer, or they have a student do it. Of course, since Ive wanted to work for the Rep for so long, that would be what I want most, to be the sound designer for that show. On the other hand, though, even if they chose a professional designer to bring in, I would like to be his assistant, and gain contacts and experience that way. I find the perfect opportunity to gently pry some information from him. After a nice long recording session for episode two one day and he's been watching me work for a few hours, we are waiting around chatting an shooting the breeze, when someone mentions that and I chime in and ask. "So tell me about that. In a hypothetical world, would you guys be bringing in professional designers, or would you have students? Cause even if you bring in a professional designer, I would love assist on that show, cause it would be a great opportunity to learn and gain contacts." He tells me that, no. He would have student designers. I respond that, obviously, Id love to design that show should it happen, but even more, I would love to be involved as an assistant some time for a Rep show, I think that would be a great learning opportunity, I would even be willing to get the guy coffee, drive him around town and even pick him up from the airport if that was necessary. Kyle tells me, "oh yeah, that would be great even if you wanted to do something like that this year (anytime) I could hook you up so that you could at least sit next to the guy during tech I know that for Borderland that I would love to have you on it, and could totally make that work, or for Winesburg any help would be appreciated, or even Flea in Her ear, it would be great too. So yeah, opportunities like that are all over, and we could make that work." I didn’t think much of it for a week. Worrying about Episode two did that to me. Till today.

One thing he has also told me was that if there was a co-pro next year, he would probably direct it and would probably request me anyway. But even if the Rep doesn’t do one, he would still probably be directing a show, and would still ask me to design it for him. I asked him, "but what if Tom doesn’t approve of that as acceptable for his students? I mean he does have that kind of history of not allowing that sort of thing." He tries to assure me that he thinks Tom has mad a lot of progress in being more open to the rep since Eric Rosen took over, and doesn’t think Tom would actually do that. "But even if he did, Id even be willing to hire you and pay you as a professional designer and he cant say no to that!" That makes me feel really good.

So this morning I went to class early, as usual, and on my walk from my car to class I started thinking about this idea of assisting on a Rep show. Something that used to be standard practice at the Rep/UMKC, Tom disallowed once Peter Altman came in several years ago, Ive always thought that that would be the best opportunity for a grad program would be to have every professional designer for the rep should have a student assistant. That’s got to be one of the greatest learning, and professional opportunities. There hasn’t been any student sound design assistants in several years because of the falling out between Tom and Peter, but now that Peter is gone, and I have a particularly familiar relationship with the Rep, everyone likes me there; Im in a particularly good position to become the first (of many) student sound designers to get to assist for rep professionals. So I start to think more about this opportunity and think "I wonder what the schedule for the rep shows this year are." On my phone, I look up the schedules for the Rep and realize, "Huh, Im pretty open during Borderland, I wonder if that would work…" This whole thought process happens really quickly between my car and my classroom.

Briefly in class, almost in passing, I bring it up. I said to Tom, What would you think of the possibility of me maybe assistant designing Borderland? Tom replies that sure, it sounds like a good opportunity, he confirms with me that Kyle is the director, I have a good rapport with him, and he okays it. On my way out of class I go find kyle to talk to him about it. On my way I realize that I cant believe Tom just approved that. It was such a short conversation, and before he knows it he's caught with his pants down. Kyle was remarkably easy to find, and was in front of him within five minutes. We pass some small talk about the recording session for tomorrow, and as we are finishing up I say, "hey, I talked to tom about the possibility of assisting on Borderland and he said it would be a good opportunity" Kyle's face lights up, "Oh really, that’s would be so great." He tells me that the sound designer he's bringing in for Borderland, a guy named Eric Sefton, is a friend of his from Memphis who was the producer for "The Dead Girl" which up till now, is the show he's been most proud of. He's always wanted to work with him on a theatre gig, but every show he has directed, has always had house designers, and that Borderland is the first opportunity he's had to choose and bring out his own sound designer, and Eric was the guy he chose. He tells me that Eric often gets freaked out by big situations, and overwhelming projects. He has a tendency to over design to prevent himself freaking out, then under designs after he's had his freak out, "so to have you there to kind of keep him in check and reality, someone that is familiar with the space and the situation, and that I trust would be able to keep him balanced and give us a great project. So to know that youre there along side him would be just perfect. Be sure to give us your bio and stuff so we can get you credited.

So today Ive been thinking about this experience and how, almost in passing, in these two short experiences, that I wasn’t really thinking about or planning, my future kind of happened. Now I have to update my resume with Assistant Designer for KC Rep, which I can imagine, looks pretty good, and on top of that' theres a chance I could design for them next year, or at lest have a second assist credit. Plus, if Kyle likes Eric enough because of his work on an audio theatre show that apparently isnt as good as the one Im now doing, to bring him out to design for him at the Rep, and really wants to work with me on a theatrical production, that’s become extremely likely for me. But today I started to think that even if all of those things fall through, its very possible that if not next year, then maybe my first year out of grad school, or at the latest within two years out of grad school I could be a professional sound designer for Kansas City Repertory theatre. That’s something I kinda imagined would take another several years. Seems kinda unbelievable, humbling, and overwhelming to me.

***

On a related note, as I have been sharing this story with people today I have not only learned that I don’t really know how to take a compliment, but that I think Im learning how to take a compliment. A couple people today have told me how great that is, and how its because of how good I am at this. I don’t know how many people have to say that before I can actually start believing its true, so I don’t really know how to react. I end up playing the embarrassed-but-I-don’t-know-if-I-believe-you angle. Today ive started thinking about the people that I know, love, admire, and have been willing to directly complement them. Of those people, which can take the compliment the best? When I complement someone, if they say to me that they don’t know if they believe me, that diminishes the positive thing I just said about them. Its like they are both accepting the compliment and putting me down at the same time. So the best way I have seen somone take a one is to just smile, and say thank you. Often, I like to press these people because I don’t think they really got it.

So my new plan for compliments is to start with a nice thank you. If they press it, I can start alternating thank yous with "now youre being to kind"

1. Thank you
2. Now youre being too kind
3. Really, thank you
4. Oh that’s enough
5. Thank you so much
6. Oh, you can stop
7. Really, thank you
8. No, really, you can stop
9. Thank you
10. Okay, you really should stop now.
11. Thank you, I get it
12. That’s enough. Please stop.

And after they do stop-

But thank you, really I appreciate it.

Now obviously, I the further on it goes it becomes exponentially less likely, but its nice to be prepared, right? And I don’t think ive ever been complimented this many times by one person in a single conversation, or probably even half that many. Nevertheless, Id like to be one of those people who can take a compliment really well. And, ideally, Id like to be good enough to get lots of compliments someday.

Its been a pretty eventful day.