A couple of months ago, I decided I wanted to take an improv class. Various happenings in my life had led me to want to learn, and a fellow actor in a theater troupe I'm in mentioned they were studying at Huge Theater in Minneapolis. I went to sign up, saw that classes were starting soon and that they were both affordable and fit in my schedule.

There was only one problem. The only class for people with no experience that still had openings was the WTF class. (For those unfamiliar with the imp...
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It doesn't bother me one bit if someone's sexually attracted to me. It doesn't bother me if they fantasize about me. It doesn't even bother me if their fantasy is something that I would never want to do. (I'd prefer not to know about it if that's the case, but just the fact that I popped up in someone's thoughts in such a manner doesn't phase me) In fact, I've never understood why that was supposed to be offensive to me. As a woman, I'm sometimes told to cover up and be careful how I act so t...
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What would I be without you?

You, who let me laugh, or dance, or cry without shame

Who let me speak my truth while hiding it

Since I know you'll be the one to take the blame?

Inhibitions and arbitrary notions of propriety

All fall away when you're with me

You make it all somehow acceptable to society

It's what they came to see

What must they think when you're gone,

When I'm suddenly so awkwardly ordinary

Without you to give instincts permission

And my jokes are only funny in my head?

A ...

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I'm not going home for Christmas this year.

Yes, I have a plane ticket that I fully intend to use. I will be sitting around the Christmas tree with my parents and siblings participating in the traditions that we've had since I was a little kid. We all love each other and have good relationships with each other. I'm really looking forward to this.

For me, however, going back to the city I grew up in and going home are two entirely different things. It's not that I have bad feelings towards where...
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By now, most of us are aware of the story of Hamilton, what happened when Mike Pence showed up, and Donald Trump's tweets in response to it. As a performer, I find the whole story intriguing, particularly Trump's idea that the theater should be a safe space. 

I've been thinking a lot about that idea, actually. Is theater a safe space? Should it be?

The answer to both questions is, "yes and no."

In some ways, performing arts are a safe space. They give their creators a chance to make a point in a...
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Having been outside of the US for three quarters of a decade, I was pretty excited to go to a proper Fourth of July celebration again.
Well, maybe "proper" isn't the right way to describe it if the activities you choose to partake in are designed to make people question their ideas of what propriety actually is. For example, most people would consider it improper to go out in public without trousers, a skirt, or at least a pair of shorts covering one's lower undergarments. Unless, of course, y...
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He's a quiet sort
A nondescript little man
With a secret in his eye
And a hint of a smile

He carries a bag
An oversize messenger bag
It's filled up with letters
Letters to the dead

If you see him
Tip your hat
Say hello
But don't linger too long
Never know when
You might need a favor

But whence he came
And where he goes
I don't know
Oh I don't know

He's a solemn sort
With a subdued chuckle
He occasionally shares
With only himself

When he sneaks a peak
(Sometimes the dead are witty)
Just before he sets
A letter on a ...
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It's been a tradition in my family for a number of years for my mom to give each of us one of those three and a half inch notebooks for Christmas. While mine contain the usual shopping lists and addresses one might expect a notebook of that size to contain, they've also come to serve a different purpose for me: if I'm in a cafe by myself drinking wine, or in a park, or waiting for the bus, or having a break at work, I like to think about life, weird possibilities, odd scenarios, you name it, ...
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I finally figured out how to link Disqus to this site. It doesn't seem to be working for the Legend's Ghost news blog yet, but it does work for this one. So feel free to comment on the blog entries. Please remember, though, that even though this is the internet, you are dealing with living, breathing humans, and you have no idea what any of these humans might be dealing with at the moment. You can disagree with what I or other posters say, but please do so in the spirit of intelligent discuss...
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I have a complex relationship with damsel in distress stories. I don't like the idea of the helpless little woman needing the big, strong man to ride in on a white horse to rescue her. I'd rather be the lady who, if she happens to find herself kidnapped and locked in a tower, either slays the dragon, uses her ingenuity to escape, or uses her wits to convince the dragon that it's actually allergic to human flesh, and then goes outside to find an attractive knight in shining armor royally impre...
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Sports: Aliens would find the concept of professional sports quite baffling. They might be able to grasp the concept that people play games together because it's fun, it's a bonding experience, and it helps keep us healthy, but the idea that we have people in our society who get paid an obscene amount of money to throw an object back and forth between each other while wearing spandex, and tens of thousands of people causing traffic jams to come in and scream at them would probably be a bit mu...
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I often wonder about talent.
There is definitely something to the idea that to become genuinely great, you need to put in a lot of hard work, but there's still that raw, innate talent that helps one get there, that inexplicable quality that makes a certain skill just come naturally, that internal wiring that makes one person learning a new skill pick it up almost effortlessly while his classmate seems to work twice as hard for half the results.

Some things just are.
That's okay.

But it leads me ...
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Eight years ago around this time, I thought you were trying to kill me.
I remember lying there in my pajamas, waiting for my brother to get me to the emergency room, thinking 25 was way too young to die, thinking, surprisingly, not so much of what awaited me next or how my family would cope when I was gone, like I'd always thought I'd think if I was dying, but of the unfinished musical project that I'd cared so much about yet never had had a chance to finish.
I remember the ER nurse asking me i...
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Every day job I've worked has had the unspoken requirement that I be impeccably polite. Most of them have also included clueless customers who feel the need to either ask me overly personal questions or make blatantly sexist remarks. Standard protocol requires that I either deflect such remarks or answer them politely while offering very little actual information. 
However, my rather active inner snarky curmudgeon (can one be a curmudgeon at 33, or must one wait until they would be considered ...
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I believe everyone has a dark secret: that embarrassing set of facts, feelings, and shortcomings they pray no one will ever find out, maybe not even their closest, most loving, most accepting friend. 

I've thought for a long time about whether to share mine here.

On the one hand, people I've tried to tell just didn't understand. They saw it as me being overly dramatic, making excuses for my shortcomings. I've tried my whole life to escape from this secret, moving to new places where no one kne...
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High heels make me supremely uncomfortable. It's not just the constant feeling that they might slip out from under me and earn me a trip to urgent care for a sprained ankle. There's also all the uncomfortable things they represent: the idea that they're supposed to be the epitome of feminine sexuality, the idea that if I don't wear them, I'm either not a "real" woman or I'm terrified of my sexuality, the idea that it's part of this hazy concept of the collective feminine that I'm somehow lock...
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• I think most people look better naked than clothed.
• Whenever I hear about parents wanting to prohibit their child from doing something innocuous simply because the child might be bullied about it, I cringe. I'm glad my parents didn't see things that way. Yes, I dressed weird and liked music other kids didn't and was vocal about wanting to be a composer when I grew up and was bullied for it, but at least I was allowed to be me.
• Whenever I have to do a murder scene with someone, I have this overw...

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Music is so many things to me. A creative outlet. A place to experiment. A way for me to meet people I wouldn't normally meet. My personal therapy. A way to say things I wouldn't otherwise know how to say.

It's also about something a lot bigger and a lot cooler than that. It's about bringing people together to create something beautiful. 

In a world as tumultuous as this one is these days, a lot of people think it would be nice if we could all just get along. And I'm not denying that it would b...
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As those of you who follow me on social media may have guessed, I recently moved to Minneapolis and almost immediately got caught up in the theater scene. My first role was Natasha, the quirkily creepy, spider-loving escapee from the lunatic asylum at the haunted attraction Scream Town. Natasha got to wander around the park warning people about the dangers of enchanted apple cider, looking for her lost spider, Spencer (named after Dr. Spencer Reid on Criminal Minds), being befuddled by people...
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It could be the performer in the subway station with the brightly colored wool cap and the deep soulful voice who you pass every day on your way to work but have never actually spoken to. It could be the loveably awkward teenage coffee shop worker who's off in her own world but still knows how to make a mean white chocolate mocha. Maybe it's the elderly gentleman who always sits on the same bench in the park, reading the paper while his aging German shepherd sits loyally by his side. Mysterio...
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I've decided to add a new section for my personal blog. For awhile, I've wanted to add other sections to the website to add to the story-centered concept of Legend's Ghost. I wanted one of those sections to be a personal blog where I post about things not directly related to Legend's Ghost's music or projects or my guest appearances. In this section, I'll write about stories, things I notice, ideas, things that are happening...or whatever I happen to feel like sharing with all of you. Feel fr...
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