Resolute

Resolutions for 2014, lighter fare edition.

1. Memorize all of the lyrics to It's the End of the World as we Know It (And I Feel Fine)

2. Self portraits.

3. Get all the way through Funny Girl.

4. Find more comics I like.

5. Sit on my fire escape before it gets so hot I have to put an AC in that window.

Water water everywhere.

A few days after I was born, my mom took me for my first 'bath,' in their hot tub. This was in El Paso, where my dad was stationed at the time. A few weeks later, we moved to a town outside of Seattle, and I lived in Seattle from 1999-2013.

In Seattle, I knew no other way to navigate than by water. To the west was the Puget Sound and beyond that a couple hours drive was the Pacific. To the the east, at least in the neighborhood I lived in, was Lake Washington. And I'm not even mentioning Lake Union, or the Columbia, which divides Washington from Oregon. Lake Washington is big enough that to drive around it in good traffic would take about 40 minutes. It's big enough that there is an island in the middle of it large enough to be a separate city- a weird, old, rich little city that's home to billionaires like Paul Allen and also crotchety folks hanging on to their modest little houses on the island for years and years, despite the appeal of selling for a profit. That island, Mercer Island, is where I worked for 8 years total including 6 years of fulltime work.

In Seattle, you are always ending up stuck in traffic somewhere due to a body of water. On the way to rehearsal, the Ballard bridge or the University bridge go up for what seems like a ridiculous amount of time, and all the cars are stopped as a yacht or a tugboat or a cargo ship passes through. The neighborhoods of Magnolia and Queen Anne are cut off somewhat because there is no bridge and a couple of tiny busy roads getting into and out of them. Every summer there was a week in July where I would end up on certain days stuck on Mercer Island for 13 hours at a time because the bridges were shut down to practice an air show for Seafair. An event that includes racing using hydroplanes. On, you guessed it, the water.

Water, water everywhere.

New York had me stymied for the longest time because the system of navigation is so unrelated to nature. North is uptown, south is downtown, etc. Downtown you eventually get to Brooklyn, uptown you eventually get to the Bronx. I would get off of the subway and be surrounded by metal and have to squint my eyes to see a street sign so I could tell what direction I was facing. I'm getting it little by little. But the more I feel the sense of the city and how to navigate it, the more I realize I'm falling back into old ways of being. Head east in Manhattan and you get to the East River (cleverly named!). Head west and you get to the Hudson. Head north and you get to the Harlem river. Head south and you get to a convergence of the Hudson and the East River and then, if you go south or east enough, you get to the Atlantic. The other ocean. On the other side of the continent from home.

The other day I had to get quickly from Union Square to the West Village for a class and my phone had died so I couldn't double check directions. I was walking, and I vaguely knew the way, until I got to that part of the Village where they completely throw the grid out the window. Despite this, I found my way and didn't even take any weird wrong turns. I'm sure part of me was driven by memory, but part of me was definitely navigating by water. I could feel the presence of the Hudson the closer that I got to it. I found school and took a quick glance across the highway to the Hudson, across from which is an entirely different state.

I don't know if it's me or my hometown. I don't know if it's a part of my chemistry, or just something that feels more relevant than man-made grids. But I do know that the ability to sense the direction of water, and to navigate by it, has made me feel less homesick than I have in the past 13 months.

Now if only I could find a reliable hot tub to dip into now and again, I'd really be completing the cycle.

There is a much clearer, more intelligent and original way to write about what it's like going back to school for an MFA in theatre, but for this late in the evening/morning moment, I can only offer this quote:

"Heaven was divinely merciful, infinitely benignant. It spared him, pardoned his weakness. But what was the scientific explanation (for one must be scientific above all things)? Why could he see through bodies, see into the future, when dogs will become men? It was the heat wave presumably, operating upon a brain made sensitive by eons of evolution. Scientifically speaking, the flesh was melted off the world. His body was macerated until only the nerve fibres were left. It was spread like a veil upon a rock."
-Mrs. Dalloway

Next chapter: MFA program and New York

It's getting late and I need to be up early to get to the "optional" dance class tomorrow morning as part of orientation. So here is my update in list form:

1) I now live near the intersection of Seaman and Cumming. The 12 year old me is laughing her face off.
Actually the 31 year old me is laughing, too. I had to ask a gentleman at the grocery store which direction Seaman was in. Anywhere else, I would have gotten a much different answer.

2) New York humidity isn't killing me, but it has completely transformed my skin.
In Seattle, even in the summer, my skin is so dry that after I shower my skin need several hours of lotioning and calming down, otherwise it'll flake off and blow away. Here, my skin is dewy and glowing. And covered with the occasional GIANT zit.

3) I still can't believe it.
This applies to so many things: not having a job, being in school again, living in New York...
It still feels like a wacky vacation. I have to keep focused on one day at a time not to freak out.  

What would you be if you weren't what you are?

I love a good confusing yet alliterative title.

I am going back to school in a few months and, while I have enough life experience to know that a few years of school doesn't necessarily determine the course of your life, I keep feeling like somehow I'm cementing the fact that directing theatre is what I was put on this earth to do.

That said, I've thought about and am drawn to many other things in addition to theatre. The most consistent of these daydreams has been being a counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist and, if we're in Pony World* and my math block weren't an issue, a neuroscientist of some kind.

I love the human psyche, and I especially love hearing how the brain affects our experiences and choices. For a long time, it seems that it was the constant debate of nature (physiological factors) vs. nurture (evironment). Recently, however, I keep hearing more and more about how experiences can actually change the structure of your brain, or the concept of neuroplasticity. In other words, nature IS nurture.

Babies whose parents talk to them more and read them stories, etc, end up having significant differences in the language centers of their brains. Years of drug addiction can actually alter a grown person's brain so that it's harder for them to regulate dopamine, seratonin, and all those other feel-good chemicals. The idea of neuroplasticity can either seem bleak- if your parents screwed up, you can actually end up brain damaged- or hopeful- a person can continue to change their brain and their way of being throughout their whole life.

Thinking about that kind of thing gets me lit up in a similar way that theatre does. I don't feel like I'm making the wrong choice going back to school to get a Masters of Fine Arts in Directing, but I do find it interesting that there are other lives I could have lead, and other things that could have made me happy, too.

What about you? I don't get too many hits, but if you're reading this, go ahead and leave me a comment- what would you be if you weren't what you are? I'm talking something that is in no way related to what you're doing for a living (or studying) right now.

*Pony World = A world where you can have anything you want, including a pony. Coined by the fabulous Pony World Theatre

The best theatre

I have been doing massive amounts of interviews for grad school- for MFA directing programs- and that is a post and a half all itself... for later.

But at the interview for the Theatre School at DePaul I got into some great conversation with Kevin, one of the first years in the program (whose full name I unfortunately didn't get), and a few other of the applicants. We were talking about the eternal question- "why theatre now?"- and of course, the best theatre that we had seen.

Kevin mentioned that I should see the Neo-Futurists while I was in town and I got excited. I hadn't (at that point) seen the original Chicago Neo-Futurists, but my friend Maiken had taken me a couple years before to see the NY Neo-Futurists, and I was utterly inspired and amazed. The Neo-Futurists do a show- Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, which I had originally heard of on This American Life. They attempt to do 30 'plays,' in 60 minutes. These plays are about 2 minutes long, and follow the Neo-Futurists' code of conduct that everything that happens on stage is actually happening on stage. Performers are referred to by name; if they tell a story, it's a story that actually happened to them, etc. It makes for an energetic, engaging, funny, haphazard and very alive show. Some of the plays just sink like stones. But when they do, it's not a big deal because they're over in 2 minutes. Some of the plays, however, hit you like nothing else can. And the NY Neo-Futurists, consequently, was where I saw one of the best pieces of theatre I've ever seen.

They happen quick, and because of that, memories of their shows can be hard and fast. But what I remember is that a woman stood center stage (which, in their small space, was pretty close to UC, RC, DC, etc), with a contraption that reminded me of the boardgame Mousetrap from growing up, which consists of an elaborate set-up of simple machines and cartoon-like contraptions- levers, pulleys, falling cages, etc- that work in sequence to perform a simple task (in the game, catching the mouse) at the end. At the end of the machine was a small pendulum, which sat next to her finger, which was poised next to a cellphone. She started the machine with a marble in one end, and then we watched as the machine worked it's magic and then ended up hitting her finger, which hit the phone and dialed a number.

The phone was on speakerphone and up against a mic and the formerly raucous audience was completely silent as we listened to it dial and then a young man's voice answer. The young woman onstage announced herself, told him he was live on the phone at the show, and he said hello to the audience.

Then she, believably nervously, said that "I just wanted to let you know...I still love you.".
You could hear bar noise in the background and he asked her to repeat herself, which she did, and there was a tension and shared breath that I have not felt anywhere since. I swear you could hear a pin drop all the way in the Bronx from our tiny hipster theatre space in the Village.

The ending of the 2 minute piece was anticlimactic. He drunkenly (it was Friday night at midnight, after all) and good-naturedly said that he loved her, too. I swear she breathed a sigh of relief, but that could be my memory being creative.

In the end, it doesn't matter, because that vulnerability and that utter sense of shared risk and community completely REMADE theatre in my mind.

That is why I do what I do. And that is why I am continuing with this crazy, panic-inducing process.

Two linguistic pet peeves

1) When people use two synonyms to describe something, separated by 'and', thinking it adds emphasis. This method is especially favored by guests on daytime talk or court shows, and eye-witnesses to any event covered on the local 5'oclock news.

EXAMPLE:
"Since the ATV accident, life for me has been very difficult and hard."

Less funny, but equally irritating to me:

2) When someone negates a part of an argument by saying that it's just "semantics." Semantics is the study of meaning in language. So basically, if you're saying "let's quit arguing semantics," to me it sounds like, "let's quit arguing about meaning." Wouldn't meaning be the only logical thing TO argue about? Why else would you argue?

If what you mean is that you think the current detail your opponent is focusing on is not important to the argument, say that.

If what you mean is, "we're just quibbling over the definition of this term," I'd say that agreeing on a definition of terms is a vital step in any argument if you're going to come to any conclusion at all.