Wednesday 21 June 2017

Coffee Chats: Life and The Art of Living


Hello my lovelies, I hope you are all well and are having a lovely day and welcome back to a well overdue Coffee Chats. It has pretty much been a month since my last post. I'm sorry for not posting very often in the last month, May has been a really busy month for me due to Performance Practice. But anyway, I hope you have been enjoying the month of May and now the start of June. Can't believe how quickly my birthday month has been and gone. 

So as you all know I am now officially 20 years old *gasp*, and I... feel no different. I feel exactly the same as I did when I was 19, but it is weird knowing that I'm no longer a teenager and I'll never be a teenager ever again. I can't quite wrap my head around the fact I've been on this earth for twenty years; life is going too fast. 

So I am mainly doing this post for you guys today because A LOT has been happening in life in general that I want to address and talk about with you guys. So sit back, relax, get a drink of your choice and let's get going. 

So as May has now come to an end it means that 2nd year is also coming to an end and I am terrified. I cannot believe how fast 2nd year has gone. With less than a week to go until I finish for the year and sadly performance practice is over it means 3rd year will have already basically begun. In regards to performance practice, I've personally really enjoyed it. One day I want to go into this profession and being on the production team and watching it all come together has opened my eyes to truly how much time and effort and care it actually takes to put on a show from both the cast and production. I wont lie, it has been difficult at times in this process but it's all been a learning curve and super beneficial. It's been really special for me and most of that has come from having a positive outlook from the beginning. I'm a positive person anyway and I hate being negative as it's such an energy drainer and a waste of time. We should all be able to find the good in everything even in the most difficult situations. I really have loved every minute of this experience and I'd happily do it all over again if I could. It's also shown me I can work under pressure and to a deadline which'll be handy for future reference. 

Everyone who has taken this unit with me; it's really made us become more like a family as a whole year as we've all grown close to people we weren't even friends with before we started this process and that has been the most special part of the entire process for me. It's now crazy to think that before I wasn't even friends with some of these people beforehand. My friend Stacey and I were getting all sentimental about it the other day. Our lecture and director for this module has been telling us throughout that we work 'with love' and that at the end of the degree, you wont care about the grades you got. What matters is the friends you made and the experiences you have and I completely agree. I love all of these guys so much and I really cannot live without any of them. I will definitely look back on performance practice with fond and happy memories. 

Performance Practice Family

Speaking of friends and love we need to talk about the recent events happening in the UK and around the world. I know this potentially might be a sensitive subject for some of you so just be aware as you're reading. 

I'm sure the majority of you have heard about the recent tragic events in Manchester and London which both aren't that far away from where I live. I'm not here to talk about what's actually happened but more here to talk about life and about living. 

The recent events in Manchester, London, and the many other places of the world prove how precious our lives really are. It's crazy knowing that one day our lives could just be taken and we're gone. Making every day count even when we're just sat at home and watching movies all day is just as important as going out to a big event or a friends birthday. As long as it makes us happy and we enjoy the day that's all that matters. 


I watched the 'One Love Manchester' concert on the Sunday just gone (the 4th), if you have't seen it I'd urge you to watch it because it's absolutely beautiful. All of the artists who performed were fantastic and it was such a wonderful and uplifting event to watch, I can't imagine how it must've been to actually live at that concert and experience it for real. What Ariana has achieved is incredible. She truly is an inspiration for all and a courageous young woman. She's been one of my favourite artists for a long time now, she's one of my biggest inspirations singing wise, and what she has managed to achieve in her career at just 23 years old is phenomenal. She is one of the purest souls to grace this earth; I'm so proud to be from the UK. This event will definitely go down in history BUT, most importantly it shows that hate will never win. LOVE will always concur all and we have to keep spreading love, happiness, peace, positivity, and goodness. Because if we don't, the hate of the world from individuals will always ruin us. No innocent people should have died for going to something they love or doing something that makes them feel alive. Not only does it ruin their lives but it ruins the lives of others. If we don't keep living and loving then we're letting those innocent souls down. We HAVE to keep going and believing in love and we can never stop fighting for peace and happiness in a world full of hate and negativity. 

Going back to performance practice. The day I was writing this, 7th of June, has been a high emotion day. Everyone's seemed a bit tense and emotional today. I wont go into too many details, but as emotions were high it caused some negative energy to come into the space which affected the rehearsal process. Some of us got a bit upset so we took a break and cleared the space. 

We came back in and everyone was still a bit tense. An executive decision to sing 'Get By With a Little Help From My Friends' was made. We chose this song because it was played a lot at Woodstock in 1969 which is where we've set our play and it was all about love and peace after the Vietnam War where lots of innocent people lost their lives which is very similar to today's current situations so you can see why it's been one of our songs through this entire process. As well as 'Don't Look Back in Anger' - both are completely related to the time period, the events of Woodstock and the life events of today. Both these keep us all connected as the family we have become over these last few weeks and we sing either of these songs together to show we're united. 

So today (7th of June) we sang '... Little Help From My Friends' and it was all pretty emotional. Many of us cried including myself because our whole time whilst we've been doing this module has been underpinned by these tragic life events and it's just highlighted how important we all are to one another. Honestly, I would be nothing without my family and my friends and if I ever lost any of them I would lose myself. I cannot live without any of them and I don't ever want to be without them. The tears I cried today were bittersweet; mainly happy tears of joy because of how lucky I am to have all of these amazing people that are in my life. And how lucky I am to be alive and live my life everyday. I feel like people forget a lot that our lives our precious and we should live every day with happiness, love, peace, and positivity as much as we can. Yes we will all have bad days and one day will have to face certain things that we don't want to think about. But we have to live for right now, which I've touched upon before in some of my previous blog posts. We cannot regret our past or worry about our future. We need to live every single moment and cherish the time with the people we love and adore as one day something could happen like what happened in Manchester and London to one of us; we always say "that will never happen to me" but we don't know that, we can't predict that which is why I can't stress enough how precious our lives truly are. One of my friends' family's were at the arena the night of the Manchester attack and they are so luckily to be alive but regardless, no one should ever go to a concert and not come home. 

I know that because of events like this people are scared to go out and live their lives and if you are one of those people stop it right now. We have to keep on going and keep on living our lives, time will stop for no one. We can't let the small negative minds of others stop us from having from big dreams and big plans for our lives. Go out there and take that chance you've been contemplating, go out and experience something new, go to a concert, take a chance on love, challenge yourself, express yourself, love yourself, love others, be happy, try something new, treat yourself! Essentially, just ride that roller coaster called life. 


As we all carry on living our lives, a general piece of advice for you all from myself would honestly be to just live. So for example, once again, during performance practice we we're having a late rehearsal till about 9:00pm I think and by this point on that day it was already about 7:30pm. We we're all pretty low on energy so we decided to put on some music and play games etc. We put on High School Musical, Mamma Mia, and Grease etc and something incredible happened. We all just lived in the moment. We took no pictures, took no videos, no snapchats, no nothing. We just expressed ourselves through musical songs and played off of one another's energy. It was just us as a group of people having fun and enjoying each other's company and living our lives the way we should, being happy. I feel like this was a very rare moment in time where you truly live and where time felt like it didn't exist and we just enjoyed ourselves together. It'll be moments like this that I won't forget after this process.That might not be special to anyone else but it will always be special to me. It's something I wont forget. 

So as long as you guys just live your life in the best way possible, that is all you need to do to keep going through these tragic events. 

I want all of you guys to know, whoever you are that I love you and wish you the best health and the happiest life possible. Never ever stop living the life you want to live because of the events like Manchester. Always live your life with peace, love, and positivity because that is what it truly means to be happy. 




With Love Always, 

Katie 

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