Hysterical Tendencies

I'm a little...well maybe curious about this one.

Anyone who knows anything about my mother or who happened by her at the right time knows about her speech/ language...er problem. If not, this is how it goes:
For seemingly no reason, my mother will choose the wrong word in a sentence, like substituting the subject of the sentence. For instance; Turkey and vacuum:
"Damn it, I forgot to take the vacuum out of the oven."

If no one notices or catches her on it, she might proceed to take the turkey out of the oven with just a little guilty smile, but if you so much as smile at her, let alone laugh at her or ask her to explain herself, she'll fall all over herself trying to say what she meant while trying desperately not to laugh (which of course is mostly what she's doing). All you have to do is interrupt her, quote her or make fun of her and you can keep her going nuts for a good 15 minutes, trying to draw you a path from turkey to vacuum that in her mind makes perfect sense. Screw TV; this is quality shit we're talking about. She goes to full lengths of HISTERICAL laughter, with the tears, inability to breathe and usually losing all vertical stability, falling cartoonishly on the floor.
This is all great fun, but then a couple years ago, I started doing it.

At first, I'd substitute a word here and there, and Andy would take it as far as he could, tying my sentences in knots and watching as I fall all over myself. I've inverted and discombobulated my words just like my mother too. (My favorite from her is "Subreno Babeem"; Calista for "Burrito Supreme".)

This is where it gets a little weird. Over the course of a year, it's gone from mildly occurring to all the fucking time. I can't get through a day anymore without Andy and Doc sitting back for another Sienna crack up episode. Doc watches for it all the time now, as does Andy, and they play with it as much as they can. Of course, I'm having fun too, laughing as I am, but it's still weird.
Why am I doing it? Was it developed in my behavior through spending so much time with my mother as hers developed? Have I made up for the sever lack of Calistaisms out here in China by acting it out by myself, self consciously substituting the thing that's missing? Or is it genetic?

I don’t' think I'm trying to fill her hysterical shoes to make up for the lack of funny. There's no control here. Trust me; I've tried. It's actually gotten to the point where normal conversations are often a struggle for me. I'll hear the sentence clearly in my head, but when I try to verbalize it, the words are lost and I've even taken to saying whatever word comes to mind to fill the empty space where my lost words should be. Slurred mixed and gibberish words season my conversations in a very regular sense. This is the worst part; the laughter that ensues when I get confused, loose my words or simply speak crazy talk, doesn't feel...right. It feels like an automatic response. Yesterday morning is a great example. I can't remember what I was on about, but when I was caught making nonsense, I immediately started laughing, unable to speak at all, but my laugh was all on it's own, and I was instantly to tears. The creepy thing is how very much like crying it sounded like. If I wasn't the one doing it, and just overheard it, I would have sworn a woman was weeping. And I couldn't stop. In my head, I was bored with this, annoyed with this, and very tired, but I kept laughing. I felt like i was inside my head somewhere, my heels kicked up on a desk, watching and waiting for me to get done with it. I didn't feel a part of it at all.

It's a very strange trait to assimilate so easily and predominately (also frustrating, as it's getting more and more difficult to find the words I'm looking for, and I'm a writer...this is a problem). It's not like a little twitch, and it does not simply resemble my mother's version; it mirrors it. I do the same things. I use the wrong words for things, mix up and slur the words, speak gibberish, and immediately break down laughing, losing control of standing up and falling to the floor, laughing so hysterically I can't breathe. I'm talking spectacular laughing here; the kind that actors only wish they could pull off for that epitome of laughter scene someone will someday be remembered for. It's insane hysterical laughter, and if you walked in on it, you'd be sure to be weary not to step in the crazy. It's unnerving because I can't stop it, even when I don't want to, when it makes me mad or frustrates me; I still can't stop laughing.

So it's gone from every month or so having a Calista moment, to trying to get through a single conversation without messing up my words and trying desperately to say what I mean without flubbing it up.

My mother also has migraines every month for four days straight that she spends curled up in a ball with a stock of imitrix on hand. She's had these migraines since her mid 20's (I think), and as far as I know, the doc's haven't found the source cause. Now, I'm not a hypochondriac, but headaches are of the norm for me now, and I've had a migraine (which is very new to me). Are they linked? How am I to know at this point? I usually have headaches now, and I can't remember the last day I didn't misspeak, discombobulate or have uncontrollable laughter.
Yeah, this isn't hereditary lupus we're talking about. Its symptoms are pretty fucking tame; laughter and a malfunction in the language center. It's all good fun and usually helps to loosen up the people around me, but it nonetheless bothers me. It bothers me because sometimes it's hard to speak and partly due to this, I shy away from social events because I hate tripping up and being unable to speak when I'll be forced to do so with strangers who have no prior knowledge to my hysterics. It's not funny there; it's uncomfortable, strange and kinda scary, because then it's not just good natured fun; it's the inability to communicate with my fellow man (not that I'd call everyone in the social world my "fellow", but you get my meaning).
I've never heard of anyone else who acted like my mom and I do. It has its place, but if you take those "symptoms" and make them a little more extreme, you go from funny to pretty fucking scary. You're talking about the language center here. I don’t' want that fucked with. I like being able to communicate, and it's pretty damn integral to me being a writer. It'd really suck if one day I turn to the waiter and ask her "Blook mein furz ladeen?" That' s serriously scary shit. I watch HOuse and love it, but it's those moments where the brain loosens it's connections that freak me right the fuck out.
Ugh. Okay, I sound like a loon now. I suppose there was no way around that. I'm not freaking, I'm just ...unnerved. I don't like how it's so....fuck...uh...indeterminately prominent and uncontrollable. There's a word for that, I'm sure....dammit.

The question is; where is going from here? My mother took a long time to really build up her wackiness, and I've been such a damn over achiever that I'm neck and neck with her and jumped all the time between. I get "blank spaces" (what I used to say when I was little when mom would just stop talking, though mine are mostly for lack of word and not simple brain wandering), inside out wordage, word substitution, insane laughter and confusion in conversations (including "Did I say that or just think it? Did he say that? Wait, what did he say? If he said that, then maybe this means...shit, what was I saying?")

Where does it go from there? If I've already caught up to my predecessor, what can I expect for the future?

Guess I'll let you know.

Free Time

I'm waiting for the word to go to a meeting about a music video, so I thought I might jot down a little here while I have some free time.
Free time. Doesn't seem to be a lot of that going around lately. We've all had our parts to do, of course Andy gets the worst of it, but we've all been feeling it. For the past few months, we've been working with our new partnership Wanian (Year of the Frog), a film company.

Our main attraction in the partnership is our special effects and technical abilities, but we do the whole bit from script to post. We dont' always get to do the script, and in those cases, things are usually confusing due to the communication errors (our partners speak next to no english at all, and a lot gets lost in translation), but we try to keep it as set up as possible. My art has come in more and more handy. To fix the translation errors, I just draw up a story board instead and then we see the nice big green light and get working.
I'm not sure why exactly, but since we all met, they've been bent on "making me a star" out here. There was never a point where they asked me if I wanted this, they just decided that everyone wants to be a star and that small nosed white American girl definitely wanted a piece of the famous action. They did ask me if I liked to sing. Yes. They asked me if I wanted to sell my art. Yes. They asked me if I want to act. Yes. This is all true. I like singing and acting and painting never stops for me, so of course I want to sell my art, but that doesn't mean I want to be famous. I know that many people who read that will shake their heads and disagree saying that I'm full of shit, trying to be deep or different, and I've heard it before: "Everyone wants to be famous." Not true. A few years ago when I was still needing the attention I might have been able to play with that, but even then I wasn't all that into that kind of life.
A few years ago I was a much more social person. That's changed. I don't like being in big groups of people and I've gotten tired of pretending to like people for "face's" sake. I used to get a thrill out of turning people my way, wowing people, arguing with people until they came to my side of whatever fence we're arguing over. I liked walking in a room and deciding to own it. Even when I was fat, I didn't have a problem with being impressive, but that doesn't do it for me anymore. The truth is that when I'm in a social environment, all I want to do is leave. All I can think about are the projects I could be working on or the cool personal time I could have just hanging out with Andy or some of my other favorite people. (The fact that most of my favorite people are on the other side of the planet really is the biggest negative about being in China).
I have a taste of being famous out here, not in the sense that I've accomplished something in the public eye, but I certainly have the attention. There are not that many foreigners in Zhongshan (possible 60 in the whole city), and of them, there are even fewer young people, and of the young people there are only two girls; myself and my Swedish friend Emelia.



I can't go anywhere and be inconspicuous. Everywhere I go people come up and want to talk to me, practicing their English or seeing if I can speak Chinese. I'm a spectacle. I can't buy a bag of rice without everyone watching what I'm doing and how I do it. They don't always clap and approve (though at times it is brinking on a standing ovation when they watch how well we use our chopsticks), like anywhere else, there are assholes out here, people who hover around you and wait for an excuse to make a jibe or what not. It's worse here because they assume I don't understand so they do it right in front of me, sometimes to my face, talking to me and thinking that I'm not getting it. I've even had an MC make these kind of jokes in one of my shows, but what am I supposed to do, break his neck for making fun of the American spectacle? That's why they paid for me to sing there. Positive or negative, it gets old. I don't like being the center of attention. I'd like to walk into a store, haggle over a pare of pants and get out without having groups of people follow me the whole time.
This fact remains unclear to our partners, but I don't know how to explain anyway. The values are different.
So I've been going with it.
I've been singing at clubs and events to bring in extra cash.


I say "to bring in extra cash" because there's nothing else to it. I'm not singing songs I like, I'm not doing it how or where I'd like to do it. Mostly I'm singing at clubs, which means singing music I don't like in a place I'd never go. If I look at it in the same realm as singing and what I care about, I couldn't bring myself to do it, because in that respect, it's complete bullshit. I originally was working with a band, but most of Zhanghe's connections are with clubs, and there's no room for a band, so it's easier to get me more gigs without the band (plus they don't want to pay for them). The best I can do with it is use it as a chance to get over my fear of singing and to improve my actual singing and breathing (I have to dance while I sing, so breathing has been a biggy), which I have. So there's two good points of it: money and confidence.
My problem with the whole famous thing in this respect is that they're trying to sell me all wrong. If I'm going to sing, I want to do it with integrity and not push fake it the whole time. They want me to act like the rest of the singers act here, which removes the rarity of me and makes it so that my only difference is my nationality.
A few of the shows were pretty shady with stripper girls (like back in the day when you still couldn't show the two biggies, so they strip to stripper undies and tops) and a drug scene to boot.
The two worst: The second worst was not so bad accept that there was a serious drug scene about it, and that's not usually such a big problem here. In this show (stripper poles included) there was a table of people snorting lines out of a big sea shell and not being too coy about it.

The worst: I should have known in the dressing room that it'd be a bad night. One of the stripper girls was practically crawling through the room, her head lulling, and clearly strung out. My stage was pretty much in the crowd (unless I wanted to sing from panty seeing height) and on the dance floor, I had a chick who was clearly tweaking pawing and pulling me the whole show. Long story short: The club refused to pay me because I twisted her arm to get her off me while she was trying to rip off my clothes. The security guard wouldn't do anything about her and she was intent on seeing my show nude: what did they expect me to do, go with the flow and sing Venus in the buff? We worked it out in the end, and Zhanghe assured me that if ever in that situation, I do infact have punching rights and that he'd clean up the mess after. He said he'd be proud if I was protecting myself or anyone else in our group, saying that we are meant to be the best and respected in every arena. He got on my good side with all that. (Sorry no picture of that)


I've also been painting a lot. Their plan is to make me famous in China and then use my new found name to sell our movies that we make later on. So it's a three pronged attack; singing to get people throwing my name around, painting and doing a tour art show around China and acting. I have an art show sometime this month. It's my first in China and I've been working around the clock to produce enough for the show as well as drawing up frames and storyline work for the music video presentation of my art that they're using to market me. It's interesting melding the two together, and it turns out I have an eye for camera angles, so it's interesting too.

Click the picture to see my paintings in myspace.


Meanwhile, we are producing music videos and commercials around the clock. The moment one is finished, we're being pushed on deadlines for the next one. Andy just put together the new edit for Guo Yan's music video "Wo de ai hui bu lai" (my love will not come back), and is finishing up the end touches for a commercial for a water factory and a t-shirt factory. I tend to be the token Chinese speaking Westerner in these commercials. The last one, they had me say "Mai tixue, dang ran xuan zhuan jia zou de. Xia hu xi jia Tixue." Doc said "Hao" (good). The hard part was "xuan zhuan jia". It's pronounced shwan zhwan jia" It's a tongue twister for me...aaag, I took so many takes for that one.
And just as soon as we get the call, we're going to meet with a male singer to plan out his new music video.

So I don't want to be famous, I'm sure there's a way around that, but until then, I have people offering to pay me for my work and asking me to keep painting keep singing and keep acting...for a living. Pretty wacky. I'm not sure how the art shows are going to go, but I'm looking forward to it. Of course making movies is the main focus. We're making music videos and commercials until we get enough capital to make movies, but that's the goal.

Here's the first music video we really put together for them. This is my personal favorite, "Ai qing dong zhi". I planned and story boarded this one out, but the editing ended up changing some of the sequence of the shots I wanted. Love the ice and tear effect. (Andy rocks the kasbah). Doc handled the editing.
I appologize if this blog doesn't make any sense. I've had an hour and a half sleep so my brain's on the fritz.