calumnies and lies

I've always been told that lying is a bad thing. For a while, I adopted the saying, "it's not lying; it's acting" as my own, which didn't please my mother very much. Both points relate to my current state of mind. I feel guilty right now. I don't feel guilty because I lied necessarily, but mostly because I got caught. Sure, that makes me sound like an awful person, and I promise you, I'm really not that bad. However, in my mind, I had a completely legitimate reason and I don't resent or regret my decision whatsoever.
In school, we're doing a musical. No big deal, right? I love musicals and singing and fake dancing and lights and make up and costumes: all of it. There were so many to decide from: Godspell, Guys and Dolls, etc. (You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown was my first choice because I wanted to be Snoopy to sing 'Suppertime' with all of my heart.) Instead, we wrote a musical. I wasn't a fan from the beginning; it was too reminiscent of a certain insufferable student written play that we did my sophomore year. We eventually changed it up and I became a little more keen on it...until practices started. After a grueling audition due to the crap way that I sing, I ended up getting the part I wanted. It's not a huge part, but I get/got to sing Streisand, which is all that matters. Anyway, practices started and we blocked the whole show in 2 weeks. Good timing. Then we started music rehearsals. Solos were fabulous. Chorus numbers were horrid. We've spent the last few Saturdays working on the very first song in the musical. All day long. For hours. Over and over again. To say the least, it feels like we're getting nothing done. Yesterday, practice started at 9. I got a wake up call from my best friend, Angela, at 9:33 asking where I was. Awesome. I get there at 10. They've already started working on Bohemian Rhapsody (the first song) again.
"Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide. No escape from reality..."
was all we sang for 2 hours. Over and Over. By ourselves. With accompaniment. With choreography. With the girl chorus (which I'm not a part of. Awesome.). Without the girl chorus. Freddie Mercury would have even said that enough was enough.
We had an hour long lunch break.
We sang it some more. Not once did we get through the whole song.
All I could think about all day was the fact that my friends Claire and Daniel were in town on break from college and I had to see them. Claire's birthday was recent and she was having lunch. They had already rescheduled so I could go, but this rehearsal was ruining every plan we had tried to come up with. There was no way I was going to be able to go if I didn't make something up.
I left at 1:45, telling the director that I had to go to work.
This would have worked perfectly if there weren't Facebook statuses about our plans. This would have worked even better if the director wasn't friends with a few of us. But the statuses exist and she's Chan's friend, so she commented. Awesome.

What I'm trying to communicate is that I know it's wrong to lie. I know that I should have just stayed at rehearsal. I know I should have stayed to sing Queen a couple more times, get a little more irritated at the show's author and at the male chorus, and to learn choreography for a song I'm not even in. But I didn't. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with it because I miss Daniel's sense of humor. I miss Claire's wisdom; we're so much alike. I miss being with Chan and the two of them together. I miss last year. I miss all of them. Therefore, it doesn't matter to me that I missed an hour of musical practice. And if I get kicked out of the play, if I don't get to sing Streisand (which would ultimately work because my part is double-casted), I don't think it would upset me in the long run.

That is all.

Later Days
Peace
H