9.15.01

cookbooks are like dresses: they are both objects that i covet, purchase, place in the closet, and rarely use.

since i was in san francisco earlier this week i do have a Freak of the Week to report – this one was the creep on mission and 2nd street who tried to grope me. i shouted some rather unlady-like things at him. the irritating thing is that the grin he gave me as we glared at one another over our shoulders suggested that he’d done it specifically to get me to yell what i did. i mean, i’ve had guys brush up against me or grab my ass on a crowded bus before or something, but this guy just came right at me and tried to get a feel. it was weird and violating. i owed him a swift kick, but the street was full of people and he got away too fast.

9.14.01

for the past three days, i’ve been glued to NPR and CNN. this morning i woke up, sat down at the breakfast table with the newspaper and literally gagged on my cereal. i don’t know why i’ve been able to look at pictures of all the horror and destruction for the past three days but suddenly not today. maybe it was the juxtaposition of my daily routine (eat cereal, read the paper) with all the horror of the past week. maybe the shock just wore off. at any rate, i have no appetite for breakfast anymore, and since i can’t bear to listen to NPR, and somehow feel uncomfortable about rocking out with my favorite CD, i drive in silence.

some impressions:

my biggest concern is for the growing number of hate-crimes in america. an islamic center splashed with pig’s blood in san francisco, a mosque in texas full of bullet holes, an arab-american cab driver beaten to death in new york city – the list goes on. there’s even report of someone in boise being beaten because he looked like he might be arabic. he was from india.

my second biggest fear is that this will lead to war.

i wonder what the coming months will hold, and what it will be like to be an american in europe while this unfolds.

i’m mildly apprehensive about flying to amsterdam three weeks from now.

boise is full of american flags. everyone has flags flying half-mast on their truck antennas.

i am thankful that my friends who live and work near the crash sites in new york and dc are safe.

i worry about the fact that america’s leaders seem to think that it is enough to promise vengeance, and not also security. the american people want to see somebody pay for this crime, and george w. bush is going to give them that. but what i want to know is, why aren’t america’s leaders on the television assuring us that this will never happen again? why aren’t we examining america’s diplomatic behavior and questioning why it is that someone attacked us? otherwise, this terrorist or that one will hang, americans will mourn their losses and go back to their lives, and three years from now, something else just like this will happen.

i think that everyone has found it inspirational the way that america has spiritually and emotionally pulled together this week. it heartens me to see that no one has taken advantage of new york’s fragile state; their have been no reports of looting as far as i know. people from all over the country and indeed the world are donating blood and money, time and supplies. but in the midst of all this goodwill, i still have to ask what kind of moral are we giving to this story? that vengeance alone will account for the wrongs that have been done this week? what’s to keep children (or adults, for that matter) from waking up with nightmares, their (perhaps false) sense of security now destroyed? i am too young to really remember the cold war (the berlin wall came down when i was in the 6th grade). but i wonder what it was like to live without the sense of security that i grew up with – to honestly believe that any day, any moment, the entire world could come to an end. how do you live a normal life with a fear like that hanging close by?

when i first started watching CNN on tuesday morning, it was about forty-five minutes after the first plane had crashed. i was sitting in lauren’s apartment such that my back was to downtown san francisco. for the first hour or two, some part of me was honestly waiting to hear a boom from behind me as the transamerica pyramid or something else blew up. of course, as lauren later pointed out, san francisco thinks it’s more important than it really is, and the chances that terrorists would want to hit it are slim. that aside, i recall the feeling of waiting for the other shoe to fall…what was it like for the generation before mine to have spent all day every day subconsciously waiting for the bomb?

this post is full of question marks, as am i.

9.11.01 – much later

back in boise, having caught a ride with my father’s co-worker and driven 13 hours across the nevada desert this evening.

i have nothing profound to offer, only prayers for all the victims and their families.

9.11.01

i’m in sf, trying to get back to boise probably via greyhound.

9.10.01

impromptu trip to the bay area – today! i’ll explain later.

9.8.01

so i realize this site’s been a bit of a downer lately. but man, combine the stomach flu with a touch of PMS and throw a tech week in there for good measure – it’s enough to piss anyone off. at any rate, i won the battle (for now) between me and my stomach, so things are looking much rosier this morning.

tonight the musical review Forever Plaid opens the fall season at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival. the basic premise of the show is that in 1964, a small-town harmony group was tragically killed in an auto wreck, just before their first big gig. for reasons only loosely explained as “astro-technical stuff”, the group has been suspended between worlds for thirty-seven years. for more reasons that are largely unexplained, they are suddenly given the opportunity to come back to earth and do one last show, and only then will they be allowed to ascend to heaven. this is where the show begins. so the for Forever Plaid boys stumble onto stage, suitcases and plaid tuxedos in hand, and perform about 12 1950’s style crooners such as “Cry”, “Chain Gang”, “Moments to Remember”, “Heart & Soul” and lots of other things that i think my parents and grandparents listened to. the fantasy gets a bit out of control in the second act and the boys perform the entire Ed Sullivan show in three minutes and eleven seconds – the whole bit – accordion, cymbals, the singing nun, fire-eating, topo gigio, senor wences, sock puppets, you name it.

corny musical reviews aren’t exactly my thing, but the show is a crowd pleaser, and there’s something to be said for making people happy with your art. of course, i think the role of theatre is to challenge, not simply entertain, and so in that sense this show seriously falls short. but the fall musical is the money-maker for the theatre, and we all need theatres to make money or else who will pay starving artists like me?

i discovered some really cool things about energy fields and auras and myself last night, but i don’t have time to write about it right now. more tomorrow.

9.7.01

i know i promised you all something more fun today, but all i have to say for myself at the moment is that it’s tech week, i’ve been eating junk and not getting enough sleep all week and this morning i woke up and my intestinal track decided to revolt. i’m not a very happy camper. i have to go to work now.

you want fun? go read the onion.

9.6.01

i wake most days with a curiously hollow feeling, as if i lost something last night and haven’t quite remembered what it is yet. i’m greeted by this sense of let-down, the sort of feeling you get as little kid waking up the day after christmas and realizing that there’s nothing but january ahead of you. perhaps it’s the season, because i’ve always hated fall. there’s something about the dying-ness of all of it that just gives me the creeps. give me a cold nasty spring day anytime over the slanty fall sunshine. i think part of the problem is this house, too. when i was growing up here, this house generally had no less than six or seven people living here, plus enough animals to start our own neighborhood petting zoo. it was a house that was full of noise and laughter and chaos and life. now i’m back here, feeling lame for living with my parents five years after i left home the first time, and the house has grown silent like a tomb. my parents are both off to school and work at 7 am, and when i get up at 10, the house is cavernous and oppressively quiet. getting out of bed is a battle fought and won with inertia. i start with the simple motions; feed the cat, wash my face, maybe some cranberry juice. the sense of loss fades away as i get busy; once i’ve left the house there’s only a faint, nagging reminder that the empty space in the house is waiting for me at the end of the day. by the time i get in around 2 am, my parents are asleep and the house is dark and silent again. it’s fortunate that i’m a deeply proactive person; otherwise this depression might just engulf me. instead it just makes me dread the mornings.

the obvious solution here, you might point out, is to move out. find my own little space, or find some roommates to share a place. good point. but what the hell am i doing in Boise, Idaho? i came here for the theatre work. i’m living at home because otherwise the theatre would have housed me with some other host family. but the season is quickly drawing to a close and i hardly have anything lined up for the next year. this is, in part, because i am spending october and november in europe. i need to worry about what to do when i get back when i get back, but fundamentally, i’m a planner. i like having a few months laid out in advance. i’m reaching the end of my tether. it seems like a couple of months anywhere is about all i can take before i start getting antsy and need to move on to somewhere new – new challenges, people, places. i don’t deal with comfort very well, it seems. when i was in college my life was full enough that i never wanted to go some place else. what happened since then? i suppose there’s a reason when everyone tells you that the college years are the best, to cling to them and all that crap that, while true, can’t actually change the pace at which one lives one’s college years.

the simple truth is that i’m lonely.

i suppose this is enough self-pity for one day. tomorrow, i promise something more fun.

9.2.01

yesterday marked the close of the summer season at ISF with the final performance of Amadeus. the play was good, but i’m glad to see it go. it was time. i had this wonderful closing night moment at the end of the play. at the very end, i’m standing backstage, leaning against one of the wings facing toward the back of the theatre, just off the left side of the stage. above me is the central truss from which lighting instruments hang. it is painted a dark green metal and lit by blue footlights, giving it a light bluey-green hue against the black night sky. as the four final chords sound, the stage fades to back; i can tell because as i look up, the truss slowly fades from pale green to black, and then it vanishes and behind it the night sky comes alive, peppered thickly with stars. the final chord drifts away into the stars, and there is that moment – that precious moment of silence, in which the audience, the theatre, the stars – the whole world we have created – holds its breath, and remembers, and then the instant is over. the applause erupts, tears down the world of the play and ends the moment because it is a moment that simply can’t be sustained.

the unique and defining feature of theatre, to me, is its temporal existence. it’s what music was, before we had ways of recording it. every performance is uniquely defined by not only the presence but also the experience of the actors and audience. no performance can be exactly recreated or recorded. archival tapes of plays are made for reference, but if you’ve ever watched a videotape of a staged performance you’ll see that the video is only a skeleton of what the performance was. it’s like looking at a dead butterfly pinned into a case. you can see the beauty, but the life is gone. people frequently ask me if i want to work in television and movies as well as theatre. to me the two art forms couldn’t be more different. in film, the camera becomes this layer of glass that separates the viewer from the experience. to me, film IS the dead butterfly inside the case. its beauty may be extraordinary, but the life, the magic is gone. the temporality is what makes the event so precious, and it’s what completely obsesses me about my chosen career path. i don’t like to use the term career, because that brings to mind a business in which power, advancement, position, salaries, etc are what matter. to me, it seems like a career is something that you do during the day, and at night you turn back into the other person that you really are. i don’t want a career. theatre is who i am. it’s what i do. if i could do anything else, i would, and my life would probably be much easier as a result. but this is what i was put on this earth to do, at least for the time being. i’ve had to make some difficult choices recently w/ regards to my career and my personal life. and i’m aware that there will be many more to come. but the way i see it, it wasn’t me who chose theatre – but rather, theatre chose me.

the funny thing is that my approach to relationships and the people in my life is so completely opposite to that of theatre. i can love a play because i know that the fact that it won’t exist forever is part of what makes it precious, but i’m incapable of doing the same when it comes to the important people in my life. knowing that the moment, the relationship, the good will and good times and friendship and companionship can’t last forever hangs over me in a little black cloud. i want cling so fiercely to the special people in my life. yet the irony is that in the end, it is theatre – temporal, inconstant, unpredictable theatre – that remains a constant part of me, and the friends who move in and out of my life. perhaps theatre is meant to teach me to be grateful for the special people that i’ve had the opportunity to encounter in my life, rather than trying to catch and preserve those friendships, like the butterfly in the display case.

8.31.01

today’s reason to be happy: i finished the crossword, all by myself.

today’s reason to be unhappy: i’m TIRED and have lots of paper work to do and it’s 1 am. i’m about to go into another tech week, kids, so i may drop off the planet for a bit. i’ll resurface once Forever Plaid opens, i promise.