Monday, September 9, 2013

A Most Impacting Performance

I wrote this story for an assignment in Geography and the History of the World instructing me to "Retell and important story from my life." I have no idea what the relevance of the assignment is, but I thought, what a great memoir to share on the blog!
Thanks for reading, I hope your day is wonderful and lacking in polka music!


A Most Impacting Performance

         Prior to August of 2009, I had never done any singing, acting, or performing of any sort. That all changed in the summer of 2009 when I was cast as Jesus in my church's production of Godspell. Each summer, the children's ministry at my church puts on a musical. Up until that point they had been low budget, mediocre, (still wonderful) shows that were easy and enjoyable. The year they they decided to do Godspell was the first time they had ever done any big production.
         One way or another, somebody must have realized, “Hey, this kid is pretty good.” and next thing I knew, I was playing the lead role. I had never done any singing before. I had never done any acting before. It was all new to me, but it all came so naturally. An older friend from the church, Becky, helped me memorize my lines, something I had never done before. Lots of repetition and repetition and repetition until I got it, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if I could still recite the Beatitudes. Looking back, it was all a blur, rehearsals came and went, lines were memorized, and before I knew it, I was in the limelight. John the Baptist was walking down the aisle of the sanctuary towards me as we began to sing in unison. I acted out the lines I had said hundreds of times, and sang the songs we had rehearsed countless times, but I wasn't just going through the motions, I was really enjoying myself. As I stood stretched out on the cross dying, singing my final prayer in the final moments of the musical, my mother tells me it was then that she thought to herself, “Wow, my son is talented.” And apparently everyone else felt the same way. They stood and applauded, not just me but the other actors and actresses who had done such a wonderful job, and the musicians as well who were just superb. I thanked the countless who had helped me and said to myself and anyone else who would listen, “That was really fun, I want to do some more.”
         And I did do more. Since then, I've been a part of many productions, musicals and plays. I've even joined choir in high school in choir and am now a part of the number one show choir in Indiana. I also play about five different instruments as well as sing and play worship music at church services with a good friend of mine. I think that without this experience, I never would've become so interested in music, acting, and performing in general. I will always look back on this experience as being a major boost of my interest of performance and thank God and every one of the countless people who helped and supported me in it because it shaped my life and resulted in my interest in music and performance of all types which, in turn brings me joy everyday.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Math Class Doodles

Geometry is quite an easy class and therefore very boring. To entertain myself I draw things like sloths getting shot in the face.

This was originally two separate doodles on two different pages but they were meant to go together so after I scanned them in I went ahead and combined them, enlarging the murderous turtle for depth perception benefits.






This second drawing (below) came about by asking my friend what I should draw, to which he replied, of course, a puffer fish playing baseball.



  You can expect more doodles to posted in the future. I haven't done a lot recently, but I have a couple files full of stuff I did in grade school and middle school.

Thanks for reading, I hope your day is wonderful and filled with bacon!

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Hi, I'm Ian.

Hey there. It's wonderful to finally meet you. I'm Ian. I had a blog when I was younger, you can find that gem here. It's called Operation Awesome and it has the exact same design as this new blog because I just redid the old one and I quite like the design so why fix what isn't broken? Anyway, it's pretty fun but I decided to start over because I still have content and ideas to share but that blog is a bit old, I started it a long time ago and it's time for something fresh.

Speaking of fresh, this is what I like to call an Original Cover. You've probably never heard of an original cover and that's because I just made it up. I'll take a look at the chords and lyrics of a song I've never heard before and make it my own, I'll give it my own melody, made up on the spot and then adjusted to my liking. Never perfect, but neither is life. The sound quality isn't great but I'll let you make your own opinion about it.
This is "Losing You" by Kira and the Kindred Spirits. Enjoy!