Out of the Dark

Well, hello again.

There are a few reasons why I let this blog fade into almost nothingness. The first I guess is that it’s completely within the spine of my personality to begin a new project or idea, be excited about it, and then abandon it. Another reason is that I’ve been an avid keeper of notebooks for almost 10 years, and when that itchy habit to write strikes it usually gets pinned down in a notebook and stays there. It’s not really as natural for me to use a computer. And another reason is that the world seems to be cracking wide open and spilling over with issues that are far greater and more important than whatever I could possibly have to say. Writer’s block by way of self-deprecation.

I lost my notebook. I usually go through about 2 a year, one filled by the summer and the other filled by the winter. But my winter notebook, my little silent confidant almost filled to the brim, has completely gone MIA. Maybe someone found it on the street and is trying to make heads or tails of it. Maybe it’s at a farm upstate somewhere with all the other little runaway notebooks. Maybe it’s a bed for a rat now.  In any case, I’m mourning the loss of whatever useful thoughts or insights I haphazardly scrawled in there, and I realized that my little corner of the internet has been atrophying, and what better time to jump back in?

It’s a weird time. Everything feels shifty and oozy and a little blurred. My barista friend Rachel observed that everything feels alive. I think she’s right. There are those stagnant times where everything feels stale and a little droopy and like nothing will ever change again ever. There are those bright and crackling thrilling times where you feel new and wild eyed each day and like you’re living the life that your childhood self would cry with joy to see. Then there’s times like these. These shifty grey swirly times where everything is sort of under the surface, and you’re following the trail of breadcrumbs into the forest and have no idea where they lead and the trees are whispering to you in their own language and you’re not sure what is benevolent and what is luring you to the edge of the cliff. Or if the breadcrumb path is just endless and may lead to Nowhere.

I told my best friend Taylor about the breadcrumbs. She says the breadcrumbs will lead to amazing things. I trust her for a million reasons, especially because she is a mom now and she’s always had a good intuition but something about motherhood just bumps her up to this goddess-level magic and it’s like a have a fairy godmother who is also my same age and makes poop jokes. I hope everyone has someone like that.

Anyway, the breadcrumbs have lead me many places this year. I’ve slept in more different beds than maybe any other year in my small but rapidly lengthening lifetime. I spent the better part of a month on a floor in New Orleans in January, most of the summer in upstate New York and its surrounding neighbors, much of the fall in homes throughout the southeast, and this coming spring I’ll be who knows where bouncing about Europe because we Bandits somehow convinced a competition that we were worthy to be flown to London to record a song that we miraculously cooked up quite literally in the kitchen right before the deadline.  In between I’ve worked on a handful of new musicals and plays, many of them with cello and tow and many  of them with well-written female roles and some of them even passing the Bechdel test. When I write things out this way it makes me feel OK.

But that’s not the whole picture.  It’s been a year of crippling doubt and inspiration that has come in fits and starts. It’s been a year of making ends meet by working 3 day jobs at a time and hearing the words “you look tired” more often than ever.  It’s been a year of folks asking if I’m still an actor, of promises  and plans fallen through, of painful memories resurfacing, of disappointment and questioning and far too much comparison with other people’s stories. Of feeling like I’m on the hamster wheel watching the dangling carrot dance just out of reach. Of waking in the middle of the night to sands of an hourglass hissing through the night, of knowing there will never be enough time. 

Both of these experiences twist around each other simultaneously like some weird gordian knot, the spaces in between occupying their own worlds, this knot of mine coming into contact with everyone else’s knots and getting tangled together and fraying apart and building new knots. What a tangled web, amiright?!

I shared a video from and old Intensive Arts piece with Adrian, a mask piece for my song “Shy”. He noted that my old songs had an innocence and an optimism and a cheeriness, and now my material tends to lean a bit more towards the darkness; and when they’re not dark they’re more tough. It’s funny how as artists we can clock our changes by the work we’ve created. I think it’s lucky too. That we can look at something that came out of us at 19, then look at something that came out of us in our 20’s and say “Oh shit. This is different.” or “Oh shit. This is still me.”

There’s a relatively new Bandits song that we hardly ever play because I’m afraid it’s too moody called The Corner of Dark and Light. I’m going to try and be less afraid of it. This thought may be a post for another day, but I think I’m coming to terms with the kind of art I want to make, and I don’t think it’s pretty or clean or polished.  That’s probably why I’m drawn to Stevie and Janis lately and am slowly amassing  and cherishing comparisons to these women in writing and performance style. They understand that marriage or rawness and skill, of feminine and masculine, heartbreak and power. Corner of dark and light.

Whatever the case, I’m back to the bloglands, and to whoever is peering into this virtual notebook, thanks for canoeing with me down this stream of consciousness. Beginning again is always messy, right?