No, said Aziraphale, it's ineffable.

hewhomakesnosound asked:

Good day, Mr. Gaimen. I'm writing a scholarship essay for college and the requirements is to interview a professional in my field. Just 3 questions. Much love for answering me. 1.) What initially inspired you to pursue the industry that you are currently in? 2.) what are some aspects about your career that you didn't know about or consider when you were starting out? 3.) What are some things I should be spending my time doing now outside of school to help me prepare for a career in this field?

1) Hunger, a need to have a roof over my head, and no other marketable skills.

2) I didn’t know about most of it when I started out. But the idea that there could be problems of success was way beyond me: I understood the problems of failure, but that success could bring its own set of problems was a surprise.

3) Read everything you can, especially the kinds of things you wouldn’t read for pleasure. Then try to imitate what you’ve read.

beauty-grace-outer-space asked:

A stage light fell on your head????

So…

Fourteen years ago, I was a teenager working as an intern for an abusive theatre company putting up a production of Midsummer Night’s Dream on a playground in a state park in NYC. It was abusive in many ways - the director would do things like a) cut your whopping $75/week stipend in half randomly when she felt like it, meaning that you might not even make your transit costs back if you lived a significant distance away, b) scream obscenities at you if you didn’t come back with enough donated loot for the gala silent auction after walking the streets for hours, or for such transgressions as not bringing an umbrella to work because the sky was blue when you left, and showing up slightly damp as a result, c) stand behind you as you brought up and down the sound for the 20 different body mics the actors were wearing; you had to turn up each mic a split second before the actor spoke and down as soon as the actor finished speaking to avoid picking up ambient noise. If you were a split second later than that, she would hit you on the back of the head.

The production was a really cool idea. It was Caribbean-inspired, and mixed professional actors with aspiring actors from the Harlem area. I loved a lot of the actors I worked with, the other interns, and even the company manager, though he wouldn’t stand up to the director at all. It was actually a good show, but the director treated the concept like something she had to do to fulfill a grant proposal item, rather than actually being interested in outreach and diversity.

Our lighting consisted of several Source Fours, lighting instruments that weigh around 15-20 pounds and are two feet long, which were attached to 15 or 20-foot-high shaky metal structures, which in turn were secured to nothing; the park would not let us touch any of the trees, so the lighting rigs were essentially held down with sandbags.

During the final week of rehearsal, my shift was about to end, when the skies darkened to an ominous red, and winds whipped up. The radar basically showed a wall of doom. It was clear that there was about to be one hell of a surprise summer storm, and we were right next to the river, which made it worse. Dust and debris were blowing around violently, but instead of allowing me to take cover, the director backed away to safety and shouted at me to protect the sound equipment. As I was trying to wrap up the sound board that was clearly more valuable than me, a human being, I heard a metallic clanging from behind me, and the next thing I knew, a giant stage light was smashing into the back of my head, with the metal rigging ripping down through my shirt, gouging into my back and pinning me to the earth. My glasses were nowhere to be found. I felt my jaw click out of place as I tried to shout for help. I was too stunned to form words.

There was an ambulance stationed at the park. I, along with our oldest actor who had been sliced in the forehead by a gel, was rushed to the hospital; I was trying desperately to maintain a stoic facade, but started crying in the ambulance, and was furious with myself. We showed up to the hospital at around the same time as what appeared to be the aftermath of a gang shootout. Once I got to a room, they shot staples into my head without anaesthetic and warned me about concussion.

The company manager, thank goodness, offered to drive me back to my campus where I was staying, because it was in another state, my shirt was ripped to hell, there was gauze down my back, and I couldn’t see straight. When I got back to campus, my boyfriend (now husband) was at least still there over the summer, so he could watch me for the night. I stopped in the campus convenience store to get something to eat after who knows how many hours with nothing (as a type 1 diabetic). We ran into a friend of ours who looked at me, ripped shirt, bandaged back, no glasses, staples in my head, blood in my hair and all, managed to MISS all of that, and said, “Hey, you look different. Did you dye your hair?” I had to laugh.

The theatre gave me one day off for my trouble. The director COMPLAINED about giving me the day off. The next day, when I returned, she had me walk around for hours in 95F+/35C degree heat with a head wound. They didn’t pay for the hospital bill. Luckily, my college financial aid office basically gasped in horror when I told them what had happened and how much money I had lost, and vastly increased my scholarship to make up for it. Five years later, I received a bill for the ambulance.

A little while after the incident, when it seemed like a fever dream, I was telling the story in detail at a fancy party; at least, I felt, I could trade on the story for entertainment value, considering how much it had cost me. I was laughing through the story like I normally did, when one of the people I was telling it to, a doctor I had just met, frowned, because he didn’t find it funny. He asked me if I realized that, if the light had hit me a couple of inches lower, I would very likely have been killed or paralyzed for life. It’s one of those “multiverse moments” - I know that, if multiple universes exist, there’s at least one without me in it; my life ended that day because I was less important than sound equipment.

As an adult, I now know the importance of workplace rights, and the organizations that give people the ability to stand up for themselves. I know what I didn’t then, which is that paying your dues should not equal potentially paying with your life, and just because a company is small, doesn’t mean they don’t have human responsibilities. Mostly, I know that every day since then has been a wonderful gift, and looking back so many years later, I am grateful for every one of them.

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Haboro Coal Mine