Reflections on a Year Since my Play

I’ve been talking on the phone almost every day with an old friend who lives across the country. She is someone who knows me so well it almost makes me cry every time we are on the phone together. How are you doing? We ask. It feels really exposing right now. The crazy thing is that that question is, in its essence, an exposing question. It makes sense that we would feel exposed answering that question. But before the crisis, the many many crises, I felt comfy in my armor, comfy in my whiteness, comfy in the ways I questioned my whiteness, comfy in my depression, comfy in my liberalism, comfy comfy comfy.

Facebook has reminded me that my play This Show Is About Progress opened the first week of September last year. My body had just been through a vibrant transition. My depression was under control. My diabetes was under control. I could see the way out of the darkness of isolation. I was finally eating for the betterment of my life. I felt like my actions had an actual effect in the greater world.

Over the last year the world has gone through tremendous loss after tremendous loss. Some of the losses feel new and some are so old and worn that it fills me with shame everyday. The people of my community, the theater nerds, are without a space to explore these losses, to grieve in the way we know how. We are without the space to make beauty out of the mountainous detritus that is life on this planet. How are you doing?

There have of course been and continue to be beautiful online performances by the bravest and most fastidious of us all. I am forever grateful to those of us who perform theater online even when it feels like screaming into the void. Screaming into the COVOID-19.

I am redoing my website, posting old essays that I like from a while ago now. I’m sorry if any of them are tone deaf. I’m trying my best to get a job to replace my lost income and to find perhaps a new way to be known.

After some struggles with my illness I am again eating for my betterment. I am teaching children which gives me some stability and gives me the shining eyes of the future of humanity. I am taking my medicine. I am finding ways to take actions that have effects in the greater world. I have been getting on the phone asking if people will vote in the election, how they will vote, etc. I talked to this 80 year old woman in Florida and she said Trump made her believe in reincarnation. She railed against him. She had had hip surgery and was unable to walk or leave the house but she assured me that she had everything figured out to get her ballot in the mail. She was determined. 

I’ve also been going on dates. I tell this story only to spark some modicum of hope. A boy with who I went on a date (who uses whom anymore?) told me that he had never voted once in his life. He was 29. He also told me that he worked in finance “for the money.” Do you like anything else about your job? I asked him. “I’m at this job for the money.” He told me. We were not a match if you can imagine. But he did tell me that, “I’m voting in this election.” Why? I asked. “Because I don’t want Trump.” He said. Like I said, a modicum.

It’s nowhere near enough to elect Kamala Harris as the first female Vice President, the first South Asian Vice President, the first Black Vice President to fix the deep gash that has been cut into fresh skin the last 4 years, the gash that has been reopened in the last 4 years, the gash that has been joined up with gashes already gushing for centuries. We are bleeding so much blood as a country. The blood is coming disproportionately from black and brown human people. Real blood. This is not a metaphor. It needs to stop.

Nothing will fix this gash. This terrible, long and winding gash. 45 didn’t start the cutting. He was handed the knife and he grasped it happily and he waved it around like he wasn’t standing in a room filled with our most vulnerable people. He was by the way. He waved a knife in a room filled with the most vulnerable people in our country. I guess this might technically be a metaphor but the bodies are real.

Vote, please vote babies. Vote, please vote. But do so much more. How are you doing? What are you doing? I love you. I MISS YOU. I miss seeing you randomly at a function or at a crosswalk. I miss kissing you. I miss asking if I could touch you and having you tell me that you don’t want me to touch you right now but having it be for a completely different reason. I MISS YOU. How are you? I can’t see you. I can’t see you. I love you. I MISS YOU.

My fabulous friend and stage manager Scofie sent a google hangout request a few weeks ago for the cast and crew to get together and hang out. A reunion. I forgot how truly wonderful it is to be backstage at a show. I know for sure that theater will never die because it is simply too fun to be backstage. It is simply too fun to be with the most charming people the world has to offer. I miss you. I will be seeing you backstage. Maybe not soon, but I will be seeing you again backstage.

Here are some highlights: Liza and Scofie are figuring out school for the little ones in their lives. Pods! Julia is engaged to the best dude. Thank you for all the help and the burritos, Kiki. Carolina has a job for you if you want to work for the county. They are hiring! We talked for a long time about cribbage. James has a theory that seemed to pan out about how to count the 15s in your hand. It had us all doing spoken word. Evan has a working air conditioner. That much is definitely true. Amerigo the dead cat will be making a wonderful cameo in a Christmas special. And Monika has started making earrings. I made her show them off 5 whole times as people came in and out of the chat. I was never bored. Here are some pictures I made her take this morning: