the breathing memory

with the east coast deluge, my wedding season comes to a close. it is fittingly dreary for an "end of things," though i had hoped to grasp a tiny bit of summer here in the south. alas, i waited too long. instead of lounging by the pool, i have ample time to putter around my home town. to visit the spots of those enduring moments in my brain. probably too much time.

that being said, the last of my weddings was beautiful. vastly different--actually, they were all very different from each other. yet, everyone managed to plan something very fitting. i love how different they all have been.

sometimes on the other side of the fence you mush all marriages together. it becomes a blur of TLC episodes and wedding magazines. when most of your friends are single or family-less, you start to re-imagine  "domestic bliss" from fragments of your memory, real, imagined, from that last pulp novel to the 3d family film...

my sister Julia and her husband got married at their new house, which they have been refurbishing themselves all summer. and we are not just talking a little paint--not only the walls, but everything from  a complete upheaval of the yard, to the plumbing, to the freakin roof-- yes, they laid the beams!! in the ceiling!

not only was the wedding perfectly simple, but allowed all the friends and family to really appreciate how much work they have already put into their new home.

alyssa's wedding, on the other hand, was incredibly elegant last week. the ceremony was at a beautiful mansion, overlooking LA. all the fancy guests hid beneath delicate, matching parasols to fend off the blaring sun.

i didn't know a lot of people at the wedding--a far cry from the plans we made as teenagers in high school, daydreaming about our lives together. the houses we'd have, the baby strollers we'd push, the husbands we'd torture... it wasn't so much the "what" but the fact we'd be doing everything at the same time, so we could share the suffering and the joy, could gossip and bemoan together.  but times change. and we grow up. i guess some of us do.

her wedding was officiated by another of our friends who got one of those "day passes" to legitimately perform the ceremony. a very sweet idea.

my mind is full of twistable turnable thoughts that i have not yet decided if i should let in or i should just pack away.

however, i am very glad that i took the time, money, and effort to make it to all of the weddings this summer.  living the status quo is a terrible place for an artist.  you must stretch yourself in some way as much as you can. whether reading new scripts, attending scene study classes, trying out different ideas or having wild adventues.  sometimes, esp when things are emotionally stressful, stretching can mean a simple, rote physical warm up. but it can also mean this overindulgent "exploration" of "feelings."

and as i am falling asleep typing this, i'd better sign off for now.

limbo: when the aliens descend

there is a state between awakefulness and dreaming. it is unrecognizable when you are in it- the state of full cognition flows right into this limbo without marker. but it seems to me that this limbo might as well be a whole 'nother person taking over my body. invading my skin as my conscious slips from control. maybe it's an alien having fun with a corporal human. or maybe it is a me from an alternate world.

i have often wondered if our dreams are reality some where -- after all, if the multi universe theory is correct , everything that can be is somewhere. why not then our dreams?     if in a dream we can see into another version of ourselves, maybe this limbo is a different kind of blurring between our realities. this would explain why i still feel like me even if i can only vaguely remember what has happened, what i have said and done.

could this also be what happens when we drink? maybe not when we just drink to a state of drunkeness, but when someone's conscious blacks out, when we are still acting and speaking and doing, but not recording any of it. maybe we aren't recording it because a different version of ourselves is recording it.

have you ever stayed up all night? had a sleep over? as a four year old or fourteen or forty four? have you had those late night conversations where you know you are making complete sense and then you wake and your friend or partner or sister laughs and says "you were saying the funniest shit last night!" and you don't remember.

i have long loved to document those moments. well, i love to capture those moments for myself. but if they involve other people they can sometimes be embarrassing or too revealing just as often as they can be good fun.

but alone they are like tapping into some secret. the bulk of my really bad poems in highschool came from mining limbo. i wouldn't be able to sleep, would sit up under my skylight with my journal de jour and scribble away my thoughts. in the morning i would look over what i had written. the last few pages often enough were illegible - even my other selves have atrocious hand writing. but before it trailed off into chicken scratch, there was pure adolescent angst gold.

i don't do this anymore. i don't have the luxury, my days packed going from one thing to the other in my desperate attempt to realize a career of a working artist in nyc. it seems my nights are a delicate balance between struggling to sleep and dropping like a rock. if i tried to write as i sleep, i'd probably keep my mind spinning on endless tracks till dawn breaks.

however, i do take a very long subway to my pinnacle of manhattan. at least late at night i do. and i am becoming adept at thumb typing. which means my itouch is filled with "notes" thumbed out as i force my eyelids open to stave off opportunistic thieves, rapists, and hoboes.   sadly the touch screen keyboard isn't quite as forgiving as my  young penmanship. and the apple provided automatic word correction doesn't always help.

but flipping through those late night subway ramblings, i again wonder- just whose thoughts have been pouring out?  i'd like to meet her.    


ps. if you haven't seen the joe iconis rock and roll jamboree yet, what is wrong with you? don't you get how awesome it is? my sister, katrina rose dideriksen, is a superstar and joe iconis somehow taps my brain. not to mention the awesome stylin' of the rest of the iconis family. seriously. get on the train.

what's another year?

there is something about being an actor that seems to keep people, well at least some of us, in a perpetual state of "growing up". you're not really a child any more, but you have to be able to play. if you lose your ability to play, i don't think you can be a very good actor. without playing, how do you take risks?

then again, maybe it's just me. me refusing to take on the responsibilities of being an adult.  it's not that i want to go back to high school--though kindergarten was pretty fun. it's more that i just don't see myself in that locked down world that being "an adult" seems to represent in my mind. i'm still moody and crazy and wear funny clothes, even when i'm trying to be "wise".

oh well. :)

Cynicism vs. Conan O'Brien's Optimism

 "All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism, for the record, it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen."

so CoCo ended his Tonight Show reign, grabbed his guitar and joined Will Ferral, ZZ Top, Beck, Ben Harper, and the Tonight Show band for a heart felt rendition of "Free bird" --complete with cowbell.

anyone who watches tv knows the story: Jay Leno's 10pm show got terrible ratings, bringing down ratings for local news and giving a bad lead-in to Conan's Tonight Show. instead of just pulling the plug on Leno, they decided to move his -terribly unfunny- show to 11:35pm, where Leno had once ruled the ratings. the "Tonight Show" would then move to 12:05am of the next day.  Conan, a long time veteran of comedy and television, refused to "aid in the destruction" of a 60 year institution he loved. so he was forced to leave.


Michael Ian Black wrote a wonderfully in depth reflection on why so many of us became invested in the whole mess. and while his main point is that we should be just as emotionally invested and outraged about the truly important things, he says people cared because Conan became a stand in for all "the aggrieved, the injured, the wrongly terminated."  he says:


"We see Conan as a victim because we feel as though, like us, he wasn’t given a fair shot. If a guy like that, a guy who has everything, can be downsized and demoted, what hope do the rest of us have?"

and yet on his final day, in fact his final chance--due to his release contract-- that he will be able to say something negative about nbc, he acted with grace and humility, begging all of us not to lose our dreams.

am i a cynic?  i was about to type "no".  and then i remembered the bees that follow me. 

i admit i often have a sardonic sense of humor. that sometimes i can't control the snarkiness.


puhlease. i can be an evil and morose monkey.

you have hard days, hard weeks. you have an extra glass of wine and make unwise decisions.  you watch your talents lay unused while you exhaust under yet another day job. it is hard not to be a cynic, especially in the art world. waiting for the next gig.

would it be easier if, like Conan, i had been employed and paid from the moment i left college? undoubtedly. but we don't all have that luxury. if you have to struggle to hold on to optimism, does the struggle itself diminish that optimism?

can you be happy by clenching happiness in the palm of your hand?

i heard Dan Sullivan, the illustrious director, give a great note once to a misguided actor. (Mr Sullivan is always giving great notes) said actor was having a terrible time with a scene from Hedda Gabbler--to his credit, not an easy play. stuck, the actor was stubbornly refusing to hear what he was being told, arguing with even the "it is cold outside, that should affect you." the actor didn't want to "fake" being cold. finally, with only the barest hint of disdain, Dan said to him "Act like it is."

Act like it is.  fake it till you make it. this has been one of my greatest tools in life, on stage.

in acting, you know (or decide) what your intentions are. when things aren't clicking, you keep going through the motions, fulfilling all the aspects of the moment that you can--however superficial, and sometimes you fall into the truth.

this isn't a bad tactic for life either. smile until you are happy. try it. but you have to make your smile have all the aspects of a real smile, not a plastered grimace. or try it with a laugh. go on. fake a laugh, a good full one.  the physical act of breath leaving the body through the gut, with force and voice. it can engage actual positive feelings. for realsies.

now i am not about to claim that i am always happy, or for god's sake that i always look happy. i know the truth is far from that. but i also know that we make our own reality, our own little Matrixes.

so that brings us back to optimism vs. pessimism. where does a made-up smile fall in that spectrum?

meandering thought of the day, as i prepare for another audition for a precast role.

performance: the past, present, and future of art

In a recent interview with Fresh Air, George Lucas said "I always tell people, I say look, as long as Green Bay Packer fans go in the 70-below-zero weather, in the snow, to watch a game they can't actually see because they all want to be together and scream together and have a good time together, the movie industry is safe. And there will always be movie theaters. There will always be people that want that social experience, because people, human beings, are a social animal, and they will want something like the opera, like the ballet, you know, they will want to go and have this communal motion picture experience, or like plays and Broadway shows."

Lucas is reflecting one of the most fundamental aspects of live art: the commune between creator, performer, and spectator. while i might argue with him over the sustainability of high art forms, including opera and the ballet, i think his assessment of  cinema is right on the money.of course with the rise of digital video, it is easier and cheaper to make low budget movies. like Lucas, i believe these "small" films will continue to be pushed off screen into video-on-demand services.  however, in order to survive the digital age where we can carry all the latest films on our phones,  the cinema "blockbuster" is going to push the boundaries of  the communal experience.

it started simply enough with the expansion of the (outrageously priced) "snack bar."  where once you could only get hyper saturated popcorn (be careful, that stuff is bad for you), now you have everything from chicken, hotdogs, and pizza, to gourmet options like fresh baked treats, samosas, and vegan options, to a full bar. and while i fully admit to sneaking in my fair share of items, the novelty of having a beer or a glass of wine in the movie theatre still gets me. then the cinemas upgraded seats, sound systems, and projection. now finally we are seeing the beginnings of true revolution in the film experience with the meteoric explosion of Avatar. even if you haven't been won over by the slew of 3D films or haven't tried an IMAX, they are here to stay. why? because you can charge double the price for the experience.  luckily for us, greed will spur the technology forward so it becomes less uncomfortable and more enjoyable. 

but the cinema is a purely audience rooted communal experience. and if 3D is indeed the future of such experiences, we are talking about a communal experience literally behind the individual walls of glasses. yet, Lucas also mentioned the survival of opera, ballet, plays, and Broadway.  as an actress (and a pretentious spouter of thought) i have to wonder how we keep communal movies from taking over traditional art? when Shakespeare wrote, he wrote for the masses. the masses attended the theatre and his plays are rife with commentary that his contemporary audience would have inherently understood. he shaped his community with his art in such a profound way that his made-up words and phrases are still in our language centuries later. there are too many examples, but his affect is so extensive that i can't help but list a few:

Dead as a doornail (2 Henry VI)
Fancy-free (Midsummer Night's Dream)
For goodness' sake (Henry VIII)
accommodation (Othello)
assassination (Macbeth; "assassin" was already in use and derives from "hashish eater")
circumstantial (As You Like It / Cymbeline; first attestation in the sense of "indirect")
cold-blooded (King John; first use to mean "lack of emotion")
fashionable (Timon of Athens / Troilus and Cressida)
to gossip (The Comedy of Errors; first use as a verb "gossip" was one's familiar friends)
moonbeam (A Midsummer Night's Dream)
vulnerable (Macbeth; used in today's sense)

so how do we, as artists, make our art relevant? Drama 101 (or Art 101) : what is art? is art, "Art" if nobody sees it? without an audience, what is a performance?  if a tree falls and nobody hears it, does it make a sound? how do we make a sound in an over saturated world?  

well, i think the survival of performance art will depend on two very different factors. one, the generosity and desire of the upper-class to participate in an old fashioned definition of "culture."  but Shakespeare did not transform our dictionary by only performing for the Queen. so, two, the evolution of the communal experience between artist and audience. 

to stay relevant we must reach the audience. we must play off the human desire for communal experience, which means we cannot rely solely on traditional theatre. i'm not suggesting we completely abandon the master playwrights, choreographers, and composers. but unless you are only marketing to the few who can afford it, we must find ways to make it relevant. to make it better than the high definition dvd version with famous performers someone can watch close up for a fraction of a ticket price.  

in the last few weeks, i have participated in two such evolutions of live art. first as a performer with the Adirondack Shakespeare Company's production of Richard III.  this was a "raw shakespeare" performance, which means a small company of actors prepare all the lines of multiple characters on their own. then the actors come together for an incredibly intense couple of days, to review lines, choreograph fights, work on relationships and intentions, but the first actual performance of the entire script with full character intentions is done with the paying audience.

to some extant, this is a bit closer to the way shakespeare would have performed his pieces. the performances were "raw," minimal costume and costume changes (by today's standards), minimal sets (the words describe the settings), and rambunctious audiences (the Globe resided in basically the red-light district, surrounded by cock fights and bear baiting and the "pit" was the standing room cheap seats). as for the actors, they pretty much only had their own pieces of the script and all the rest would have been new to them in the moment.  (of course, the company-The Chamberlain's Men- would have performed the play many times, so after the first few performance we can imagine that the company would have been very familiar with the whole thing. it is also said that shakespeare wrote some what with his company in mind. that is, his actors would probably have played their "part" in every play. Richard Burbage, the tragedian played Hamlet, Lear, Othello, Richard III.  Will Kemp, the comedian, played Bottom and Falstaff. later Robert Armin succeeded him and played Touchstone, Feste, and the great Fool of King Lear.  in other words, they knew their stuff and ol' Bill would have known what they were good at, and together they made each others' lives easier.)

this was my first experience playing "raw" and i think it was eye opening on a number of levels. one, it revealed to me how much of my process of learning my character and the play has become wedded to the exploration in rehearsal. now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, that is after all the point of rehearsing. but knowing your lines can't be dependent on your blocking or on a set piece. my process of physical life has overwhelmed some of my basic prep, which is inexcusable. so this was a return to basics.

now, heck, i went to grad school. i'm not saying you just learn the lines and throw someone up to say them and you make good art. better, as a trained actor ever questing to perfection (ie communication of truth), this quick and dirty process forces you to have excellent preparation of lines and intentions (actor speak for why my character is doing what i am doing). the process, if fully prepared, gives you the chance to really live in the moment, open your heart to instincts, and as shakespeare instructed:
 Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this
special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature. For
anything so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end both
at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere, the mirror up
to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image,
and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. 

i'm not going to lie. it was also terrifying to perform to a full house without the safety net that set repetition and fancy accouterments allow.  


as for the audience, i don't know how this type of performance affected them. but it did seem to me that there was an electricity in the air. that we were all in this together. that not only the company, but also the audience was pulling for Greg Davies, our Richard III, to make it through the intensely difficult role. they weren't drunk, to my knowledge, or cock-fighting, but they were more audibly present than my last several shakespeare pieces. plus, we did find a drunk man passed out on the stage and a naked couple in the booth prior to performing, which added to the atmosphere.

my other recent communal live art came as an audience member to the Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet Company's recent installation piece. in this instance, there were no seats. the audience quite literally became part of the dance, as the dancers performed all around us. they took this even one step farther by dancing on multiple planes: around us, through us, in the air (with ropes), on the walls (with strategic foot holds), and even with preshot digital projections.

personally, i loved it. this is something i could not have watching PBS. it was challenging and engaging, even if you can't possibly see everything at the same time. it was even slightly uncomfortable, standing relatively still for 45 minutes in your heels. yet, even that discomfiture both put me physically in the dance, a part of the group movement, and metaphorically highlighted the supreme example of body and motion the dancers exude compared to my own ill developed self. the piece, like much contemporary and evocative art, is what you make of it, subjective to how each individual interprets what they see.  i saw a long board room table, a people attempting to break out of the reality (that i myself represented throughout) and a struggle against controllers (leaders, bosses) and controlling forces (self consciousness, even gravity). in this essence, the audience is an integral part of the story being told.

wow, that's a lot of meandering today.

Xmas, yet again I have defied you!

i love christmas. i hate christmas. i love beautiful snow laden trees and moon reflected glowy nights. i hate dark days and freezing solitude. i love the rebirth of a fresh year. i hate the emotional upheaval of lost days, endings, and missed moments.

yes, i am a soldier of the winter doldrums. i'm not sure when it started. on the one hand, it seems like it has always been this way, yet on the other, i remember a time when xmas was only about santa clause and presents and school vacation. i think it must have been high school. there was one winter that is pristine in my memory, the penultimate for a young teenager with hope in her heart and stars in her eyes. that makes it sound much more dramatic than it should. but i suppose the important thing was that in the moment, nothing could be better.

and of course, what solidifies such a moment? the moment's end. and once life was once again tarnished by so many things, you are drawn back over and over to that seemingly perfect moment. you polish it reverently, till the edges are smoothed away, till it becomes something it never was, gleaming, perfect, infinite.

remembrances are all well and good. but a pearl is a dangerous memory. nothing in the moment can ever compare to something enhanced by such attention. if you are lucky, you have other good experiences, good days. and with time, these events will also be lifted above themselves. perhaps only your own memories can save you from your memories. the brightness of the new cherished memory dims the glow of the old.

as a child you have endless hope and future opportunity. then you have successes and failures. you lose things and you gain things. as you get farther down your own time line, you begin to see -or imagine you see- the endgame. with the end come the limits, not of your abilities or even your chances but of your time to reach those abilities, fulfill those chances.

how easy it is to get lost in the past, polishing, instead of living and creating new moments to remember a decade from now.

my sister recently talked about getting rid of her "box" -that collection of items that link you physically to memories, people, time. my "box" still lives on the walls of my childhood bedroom--mementos, pictures, posters of productions from high school to college to grad school and beyond. my mother told me she takes my little cousins on trips into "the museum" as they call it. that is frightening.

but i'm not ready to throw my box on the funeral pyre. i'm taking another tactic all together. i'll let them grow dusty, forget about them from time to time. then i'll add new moments to the old. i want to fill the museum of my heart all up till it's full to bursting.

we do this in acting. prepare, prepare, prepare. image, elucidate, fill out the corners of the imagined life, till you walk out on stage and it pours through you unconsciously.

course, the danger is living in the old and not making the new. this is my challenge for the new year. to prepare my real life as i do for the stage, to keep making the memories to out shine the old.

eh, resolutions!

 

hugh jackman, a cell phone, and the rest of us

this was big news yesterday in the city but seems to have hit international feeds today-- so there's a new broadway play called a steady rain with daniel craig and hugh jackman playing chicago cops who are faced with a "harrowing" moment. i'm dying to see it if i can get cheap tickets somehow. well the other night an audience member's cell phone went off in the middle of one of jackman's monologues.

sadly, even on broadway, this really isn't that big of news. people just cannot seem to turn their crap off. now not that i think hollywood actors turned theatre should get more respect than the rest of us, but you'd think when watching two of the hottest, talented, mega stars live you'd want to pay attention.

this really became news every where because someone was, illegally by the way, video taping the performance and caught the whole bit on tape.



as an actor what do you do? it seems to me only the big stars (theatre or film) get to do as jackman did and break character and the 4th wall and reprimand the audience. true, the rest of us wouldn't make news doing so, but i've never seen it. the thing i find funny, is that a lot of us pride ourselves on dealing with unforeseen happenings. i admit i kind of love it when something (minor!) goes a little wrong. something breaks, a sound/light cue is off, a prop disappears... when we pretentious actors are really living in the characters, an "off" moment is a chance to expand, improv life. it can give you a little jolt of awareness, a fresh take.

of course it could also be a total disaster that the night never revives from. but that's part of the thrill, no?

i tell this story all the time- in my first leading roll as, of course, Annie- yes red wig and all- i had to deal with near disaster. in the loving, tender moment that the stray dog Sandy runs across the stage to Annie's arms, well one night our sandy took a running leap off the proscenium and into the dark house. for a long heartbeat, i wondered what to do. but this was the same production during which for the first time, a director made me cry over a mistake. i had blanked in rehearsal and just stopped singing. the director froze the run to yell at me, a speech i'll never forget.

with his "words of wisdom" in mind, i leapt off the stage after the dog, calling out "sandy! sandy!" into the dark. luckily it didn't take me too long to find the giant golden retriever, thank the stranger for getting my dog, and drag him back to the stage.

but this is different from breaking- accent and all-for the audience. shoot, i had one show, in which those of us singing "happy days are here again" on stage, honestly thought a woman had died in the front row when she collapsed out of her chair. hey, a room full of older subscribers, you never know! we just danced our way off the stage...

kilimanjaro: the metaphor of the mountain

with the rain delaying my run, i've finally finished posting my account of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. i'm glad i happened to look back at it today. it has been a tough week, i have struggled to come out of the dark side, to put out some positive energy, appreciate what i have without coveting everyone else too much.

yeah, i'm still going to struggle with that a bit, but having my own words thrust back in my face doesn't hurt:

"Can i hold on to the metaphor of the mountain? it is impossible not to see the implications of it in my own life. simply jogging, i am reminded- how can i quit now, this is not as hard as Kili, not as cold or hot, i can breathe, i am not empty. but of course even further the comparison is unavoidable. i am an actress- unemployed for quite a while, frustrated and more often depressed by my comparative successes to my friends and colleagues and family.

i see around me what i have sacrificed, the relationships, the security. but am i yet empty? and even when i have given everything, does that mean my feet stop? do i turn back, beaten, or do i go on? reaching my highest peak, battered physically, mentally, and perhaps only half brained, but reaching it some day all the same..."

read it here: shangala-bangala

when did everyone else suddenly become an adult?

a couple weekends ago my besties was quasi surprised by her beau proposing. quasi because she has badgered him about it for months. so much so, in fact that when he actually did propose, she thought he was playing a joke.


it was actually a very sweet, spur of the moment change. too many friends were risking giving away the whole surprise, so he just called me- said come take the camera and hide, i'm doin' it now. and really it was the best. maria is a fabulous mix of fancy hotness, hiding in a pair of holey sweatpants and donald duck tee. so proposing in the middle of the farmer's market in union square was the best thing.


though i was hiding behind a statue and couldn't hear, my favorite moment was when he got down on one knee and she's like, "what are you doing? get up!" even when he showed her the ring, she was still busy shaking her head and gesturing around her, looking for the gag. it was incredibly sweet.


i unfortunately had to run to rehearsal, but before i did we celebrated with some champagne and oysters. my rehearsal was - ehem- well lubricated. ;)

the weekend was also a good excuse to see some people i haven't seen in a very long time, despite living at various times on the same island as them.

the only problem now, is i'm pretty sure maria is now an adult. boo.

does this mean she's now going to creep over to that third of my facebook friends who all have babies and pta and all sorts of other things i can hardly even imagine??? i'm not too addicted to facebook, but each time i'm on, i stumble across something from at least one person i last remember sauntering down the halls of high school, complaining about a crush or gossiping about an outfit or hanging "being cool," and now they are building houses and running carpools! this is meant in no offense to any of these people. you guys are still awesome. it just... your adults!

i may work a million part time jobs to cover my acting habit, my own apartment, a bottle of tequila in the freezer, and yes, i do have a spoiled cat, but somewhere along the way i missed the adult train. i'm still kissing on cute boys, wear way too many hippy clothes, and like my pigtails.

hmmm. i do live in new york. i guess none of those things really mean much one way or another.

can i buy my ticket to Where the Wild Things Are yet?

manhattan fable-icious

here's the poster for my upcoming show

it's a very short preview run, with potential to move to a larger house


i'd love to see some friendly faces!

my psycho pharmacologist and i

i read a lot of "zen" books in grad school. i mean that's what you do in acting school. you zen. you balance mind, body, spirit- so you are left with a malleable blank slate. not a blob of nothingness, after all, you have your own history, but it only lightly colors a spring board for genius characterizations and truth and life and being. yada yada yada.

well if i ever came close to achieving such a thing, it seems very far away now. especially after this crazy week. i think with the right ingestables, i could indeed see the aura surrounding me. and it wouldn't be pretty.

too bad there's not a quick fix to balance your soul back out. a pill you could pop that would make the bad things fade away. in carrie fisher's new autobiography wishful drinking she talks about electroshock therapy and how it works by pressing the reset button. erasing whole chunks from her head. that may be going a bit far for me, but it is fascinating. i've heard her talk about how her answering machine says, "leave a message. tell me who you are and how we know each other." yeah, a bit extreme. she's turned the book into a one woman show that roundabout is producing next season. i can't wait!


in next to normal the mother is a bit of a mess, to put it lightly. she has electric shock therapy, which "helps" for a bit, but she can't live with the hole's in her head. (today's playlist is a couple of good songs from the show. alice ripley just won the tony for her performance.)

it seems like such a struggle to stay balanced sometimes. i remember thinking during school that actors spend so much time and energy preparing ourselves to be free- to be open to other influences so that you can respond instinctually. normal people con't do that. normal people just bottle things up and compartmentalize... i guess.

or i've just had a hard week and need to buck up, as my own crazy mother would say. i am a grownup after all.

Afterwards, he says, they always embrace.

 

yay! today i am going to equus and i start rehearsals for a play.
that's a pretty good day.