computer diary

If I had a computer diary and this was it I might write about how
there are a lot of different kinds of obsession, and a few different meanings too.
There's the kind of Obsession Calvin Klein sent Mario Sorrenti off with Kate Moss (his gf at the time) to capture in photograph form. The kind of photograph that would sell perfume of course.
Or there's the kind of obsession I sense when I see something really spectacular, like a great stage show or movie, or the fromagerie at Whole Foods. Like-- "wow, somebody cares so much about THIS EXACT ONE THING and they have dedicated a ton of time to the pursuit of this near-perfection," I think to myself. They might have come up against some obstacles and naysayers, but they kept right on. Because, maybe... they were/are obsessed.
It can be a very healthy/effective thing, and it can also result in some real tragedies. Ballet dancers are so obsessed with getting a variation right in rehearsal or class that they will dance even after their toes have started to bleed through their pretty pink pointe shoes. Football players, hockey players, soccer players, gymnasts-- they all push through incredible pain and physical barriers to achieve that elusive perfection.
It's late, I'm tired, I'm off on a tangent. What I really wanted to say was that sometimes when I start walking, I can't stop. I feel like I can understand what made Forrest Gump keep going. I derive a lot of different things from walking, and it also gets me places.
This evening I walked from Brooklyn Heights to DUMBO, across the Manhattan Bridge (the F wasn't running), to the Lower East Side and the Pig Iron show at the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, then up to Houston, to Whole Foods (hence the thoughts of cheese), through Washington Square Park, and up to the West Village. Not so far, but I swear, if I wasn't carrying groceries and didn't have to get up early tomorrow morning-- I might have kept right on walking. I overheard fascinating sound bites:
"Of course Smooky is a disaster, she's the tragic hero"
countered with
"I bet she's not really a disaster, I bet she's really together and they just make her act like that cuz it's tv."

I also heard a 60-something year-old man say to a slightly younger-looking woman,
"What am I supposed to do, we never consummated the marriage! It's been three years already!"

I swear. True story.
I get a lot of thinking done while I walk. I also started to get a blister that is bleeding now though.

Alright, I'l leave you with this. Makes me smile every time.

me and the Suicide Girls

I am directing a play right now where I thought it might be useful to use the Suicide Girls as a point of reference in talking to the playwright, actors and designers. In my research I came across one interview today where some SGs discuss how they used to feel like freaks but now that they ‘know there are others like them, they feel better.’ These characters are also sort of politically-minded post-feminists, but I was reminded of what the SG in the interview said when I was reading Sarah Ruhl’s Dead Man’s Cell Phone tonight. About finding your social/intellectual/spiritual brethren.
I have been meaning to read it for a couple of years—I devoured all of her other plays—and I read this one in one sitting… and this thing happens that happens often when I read her plays, or books by certain people (Nicole Krauss, Jonathan Safran Foer, Paul Auster, Sophie Calle, Annie Baker), or watch certain movies/tv shows (The Office, Me and You and Everyone We Know) – where I literally feel like I have had an identical experience/thought/conversation/longing/image/string of words in my head.
In this play it was: the cellphone ballet (eavesdropping/stolen moments), the Hopper sequences, the semi-vegetarianism. But it has happened with all of Ruhl’s plays that I have read. I used to want to perform in them—though in a way that feels a little redundant since I already feel like I LIVE in them… now, I can’t wait to DIRECT them.
I also think to myself, the whole thing is sort of strange though.
And there are two ways to go from here…
1) Well, how about that, maybe it’s true… nothing is original…
AND/OR
2) How absolutely wonderful. There are others like me. I am not so alone. And thank god these people write and make plays and movies and tv shows and I can read/watch them and laugh and cry and make sense of it all much more because I am not the protagonist in these stories.

Anyway, when I was thirteen I actually believed that my friends invented graffiti. So, there is a long history of having an inflated sense of my own life.
I’m sure it’s just the same for the Suicide Girls.

happy new decade

I hope we all leap into the adventures ahead like this cat. (Cat, in the sense of-- man.)

parkour motion reel from saggyarmpit on Vimeo.

Inside Room

Two experiences today made me think about the thing then 23 year-old Carson McCullers deemed the 'inside room.' In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter one of the characters, Mick, struggles to keep her fantasies, her visions, her vivid inner life going as she gets older. At 14 she takes a job at the Woolworth and the music she used to hear is replaced by this incessant "Miss" "Miss"- hissing. The novel is beautiful and tragic, the deaf and mute man, Mr. Singer, is a great friend to her-- but his separation of his true love eventually kills him. In all of his silence he is a keen observer and doesn't understand how these humans can possibly open and close their mouths so much. Or how they can be 'so busy.'


"School and the family and things that happened every day were in the outside room. Foreign countries and plans and music were in the inside room."

...

"But now no music was in her mind. That was a funny thing. It was like she was shut out from the inside room. Sometimes a quick little tune would come and go-- but she never went into the inside room like she used to. It was like she was too tense. Or maybe the store took too much of her energy and time. Woolworth's wasn't the same as school. When she used to come home from school she felt good and ready to start working on the music. But now she was always tired. At home she just ate supper and slept and then ate breakfast and went off to the store again. A song she had started in her private notebook two months before was still not finished. And she wanted to stay in the inside room but she didn't know how. It was like the inside room was locked somewhere away from her. A very hard thing to understand."

I went to see the adaptation of McCullers' novel at New York Theater Workshop tonight, the text was adapted by Rebecca Gilman, it was directed by Doug Hughes, and the cast and creative team can be found here. I didn't love the production, although moments were sumptuous, but some of the ideas obviously resonated.

The other piece that had me thinking about these ideas this morning was Judith Warner's final Opinionator column for the Times. It is accessible here, and here's a bit I particularly liked.

“’How can I know what I think until I read what I write?” the former Times columnist James Reston — quoted by Quindlen in her final “Life in the 30s” column, in December 1988 — once wrote.

Often, writing here, I didn’t know fully what I felt — about things going on in my own life — until I read what I’d written. And very often I didn’t understand what I’d written until I heard it coming back at me.

The back-and-forth of our conversations changed me."

this is my 151st post!

I'm going to see this band tonight at Hotel Cafe, one of my all-tine favorite venues, anywhere. (It happens to be in LA.)
I think this is a pretty great song, and I enjoy this video-- especially how homemade it feels.



I flew Virgin America to get here yesterday and I've got to say, best airline ever. At least for now. I love the low, blue LED disco-lighting and the free selection of great music videos. Here's one I watched that's super-fun. And, since it's almost the end of the year and the requisite "year of __x__" statements and 'best of' lists aren't too far off, I think I can say even though the song really came out at the end of 2008, 2009 seems to have been a pretty spectacular year for Ms. Sasha Fierce and looking back in two or three decades I hope we all remember 2009 as the year of "Single Ladies."

Killian's Red

I'm exhausted and over-extended at the moment-- I literally drove 11 hours in a 28-hour period this weekend, and the bookends to the time in Maine were not R&R, but rehearsals, rehearsals, and more rehearsals. I'm directing two shows that open next week and doing a lot of tutoring since it's the 'busy season' for college applications... but one day last week I was reading this story on the train and I have been thinking about it ever since. It grabbed my heart and made tears stream down my face even as I walked along 42nd street during rush hour with my eyes glued to the page.
It's super-inspiring and makes me think about how even when I feel like I'm having a hard day or things aren't going well in some small way-- I am very, very blessed. My job is to live this life to its fullest and to make the most of myself; and experience and share joy with the people I love. And hopefully, through my work, share some magic with people I don't know personally too.

Read this amazing story.

great day

My mom is visiting for the weekend and we had the most wonderful fall day. Sometimes you need to have an excuse to play host(ess) to be reminded of how truly spectacular this city is.

These pictures are from a different day I walked the HighLine (my first time, this past August), but the feeling of the day was similar.

Today had Brooklyn Heights, DUMBO, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Union Square Farmers Market, yummy homemade fresh pasta dinner, Big Dance Theater's Comme Toujours Here I Stand at The Kitchen, a nighttime stroll along the HighLine and back to my nest via the Meatpacking District and the West Village. Did you notice I love neighborhoods?... and walking through them?!
It's a warm-ish fall evening now and everyone is out. Lots of dresses and skirts and bare arms as we all cling fast to the waning warmth and the leaves fall at our feet.