Wow.
Seriously, I don't think there is anything more I can say...
Just--
WOW.
So I've been at Harvard for almost a week now (I came last Friday evening) because I was doing a Pre-Orientation--the Freshman Arts Program (FAP), to be exact--and I expected to have some time do put up a few updates on life.
I was wrong.
As soon as we got on campus and had dinner, we got to work. We've been working (relentlessly) from 9am-11pm evereyday (except yesterday was 8-11). But speaking of dinner, I have a story to tell that completely convinced me that I made the right choice in coming here:
We were at dinner and I was talking to my proctor (basically an upperclassmen who acts as a counselor) about the types of art that I do (vocal, musical theater, writing, songwriting/composition, analog photography) and she said, "Oh, you like musical theater and composition! You should meet our Resident Artist for the music thread, Larry!" Here, I should add a disclaimer that she may have told me Larry's last name, but I had been swamped with so many names by this point in time that I forgot it immediately (I didn't even know she'd said Larry until I learned his full name...).
So Megan introduces me to him and tells him about my musical interests and he gets very excited and tells me that he also loves musical theater and is a composer. Of course, by this point, I know that he has to be someone legit (I mean, this is Harvard, afterall), but I was thinking he was just a teacher who composed on the side or something, but either way, I respected the fact that he composes, because (as I learned this summer) good composition is hard. Somewhere along the line in our very nonchalant conversation I ended up telling him that I spent the last part of my summer trying to write a musical (yes, I am writing/will write a musical. Hopefully very soon) and he became extremely interested and was asking me what it was about and I explained to him all of the issues I was having and then he offered to help me out with it. "You should show me some of your stuff and I'll help you out," he'd said. So I was quite taken aback and touched because this person was obviously important, yet he'd offered to help me out without even knowing my level (or lack of?) talent. So I thanked him profusely and agreed.
A few minutes later, we left Dunster House (where we'd been having dinner) and went to the theater where we had an opening ceremony of sorts and we were introduced to the Res Artists and to one another. The first RA to be introduced was the man I had met at dinner. So Dana (the program coordinator) got up and said something about how cool all of the RAs are and that he'd let them introduce themselves and first was, "Larry O'Keefe." Now here I stopped. Larry O'Keefe... That name sounded oddly familiar to me. Suddenly an image materialized into my mind's eye of a playbill of a certain Broadway musical that I both know and love well and had seen on tour earlier this year, but I dismissed the thought. Certainly I had associated incorrectly, I thought. Perhaps Larry O'Keefe was just a common name for men who write musicals (O.o). Surely he wasn't--
And then he stands up and says, "Hi, my name is Larry O'Keefe [again the name!] and I'm a Broadway composer [here, I knew exactly what it is that he'd composed, yet still couldn't bring myself to believe it] and I wrote a musical some of you may know about a movie called Legally Blonde," and I flipped. I love Legally Blonde the Musical. Like, seriously. And I was even more freaked out because I'd just had such a legit, carefree conversation with him and I knew that would never have happened if I'd had the ability to retain names for more than 2 seconds upon meeting someone for the first time. I know for a fact that I never would have told him I was writing a musical. I mean, you don't just tell a Master Craftsman that you are trying your hand (and failing) at doing their craft.
Needless to say (but I'll say it), this past week was phenomenal. I'll have to update more specifics later, for today, WE MOVE IN!
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