"we used to write letters"

Arcade Fire continues to be one of the most inventive and brilliant collections of artists around. I love their new album (especially "We Used to Wait" and "Sprawl II") and this is probably the coolest video I've ever seen.
You enter the address of the house where you grew up. And you get your very own video.
It's incredible.
Check it out.

http://thewildernessdowntown.com/

Happy Labor Day while we're at it! Try to make it to a park/backyard today and indulge in some food that comes in buns, chip-eating, white-clothes-wearing, and other summer activities. Today is officially the unofficial end of summer.

lemonade

It's been rainy lately but the sun is starting to come out... which means... there might be...


He is very, very excited. And I love that.

this is a moment for a great speech

Dear President Obama,
Yesterday afternoon I had lunch with several older folks-- a brilliant and thoughtful 72 year-old among them (who as a young man had written his thesis under the mentorship of Mr. H. Kissinger). Before lunch began our host shared with us several news stories he'd printed out from the internet. I was horrified to learn that there are churches across the country holding 'Burn the Qu'ran Parties' on September 11th in protest of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque in Lower Manhattan. I was also frustrated with myself for being so consumed in my own personal bubble that the most I had engaged with this issue was appreciating a detail of FOX's hypocrisy that Jon Stewart had pointed out on The Daily Show a few nights before.
We were all united in our horror and the older folks at the table went on to discuss the intense need for a great speech right now. Having lived through the Kennedy years, the Civil Rights Movement, and Vietnam-- I realized how powerful a role great speeches have played in highlighting atrocities (as well as the redress of grievances) for this older generation-- and I tried to remember the great speeches that have played a role in the shaping of my social conscience. Your speech on Race in Philadelphia from 2008 is probably the speech of my life so far. (I was born in 1980.) I wrote about it here and think about it at least once or twice a week.
I know you are swamped and you are taking a much-needed vacation at the moment but I ask you to please consider making a speech about this issue. I live in New York now and I lived in NYC on 9/11 and I can assure you this Community Center would be a wonderful source of pride for most New Yorkers.
I'm sure you read it already but since this is an open letter-- I found Frank Rich's op-ed quite insightful. Read it here.
Thank you for your time.
Best,
Adrienne

treehouse

I have a new home- for two months anyway, and I feel like I'm living in a treehouse. I moved my bed to be horizontal along the window (trying to de-accentuate the long and narrow nature of the room) and when I look out I see lots and lots of trees, the greenest grass, a sculpture on the grass (Lousie Bourgeois?), the green mountains in the distance, and Degas' dancer on a sign for the Clark Art Museum. The Clark is one of my favorite museums and it also has the most extraordinary hilly, woods-y trails out back that are ideal for summer running.
The trees remind me of Michael Greif's production of The Three Sisters that I worked on last time I was here (2008) and I believe I was in this very same room when I spent the summer here in 1999. My room was right about Charlie Day's room and I much-enjoyed coming up the stairwell every night and seeing him sitting (shirtless) on his bed playing his guitar. I was a teenage girl and he was playing music-- what can I say?
It's been a hectic but incredible past several months. I've launched a new company-- with the name taken from this very blog-- and mounted a full production of Steven Levenson's Seven Minutes in Heaven-- a play we first conceived of together less than 15 months ago! All the reviews are in, and they are marvelous (check out www.coltcoeur.org to read them). And I couldn't be more proud of the show, the designers and crew, the cast, Steven, and myself. The best collaboration I've ever had. And we still have 5 more shows!!!! (Go to www.here.org for tickets)
Anyway, here is the physical view from from here.


As far as the mental view: Amanda Charlton (the fearless leader of the Williamstown Theater Festival Workshop) put it so well last night when she emphasized how special and rare this time is. For two months, I get to be ONLY a director. I don't have to be a tutor, or a girlfriend, or a receptionist, or a babysitter, or a perfect daughter, or ANYTHING else. I am so excited. I love being a girlfriend and a daughter, and sometimes I even love tutoring-- but for the next two months-- it's all about the pursuit of art/entertainment. How very special.

holding on to things

I have spent a considerable amount of time, extremely intermittently, 'moving' over the past several months.
Due to a convergence of events which include traveling for work (I have spent 2+ months in five different cities on both coasts in the past 24 months!), my mother moving out of her house, and me moving out of my LA house-- I have been much encouraged to 'get rid of stuff.' And here begins the quandary.
I used to give my friend Adam a hard time because he was so good at getting rid of stuff, I sometimes wondered why the objects themselves didn't mean more to him. Letters, cards, photos, etc. It turns out I was reading him wrong. He is constantly streamlining his belongings and yet he holds onto and invests more in the friendships he maintains from growing up, etc. than anyone else I have ever met. Which seems like the important thing. And he gets photograph printed. Which is just way too rare and awesome.
Personally, I have a very hard time throwing things away. The sunflower Susanna left me in our shared locker at Boston Ballet in 1991? It's on top of the bookshelf in my bedroom in my mom's house. ...The set of pajamas I tried to sew in 1993. Every letter Nick Farrell wrote me between 1992 and 1998. Photos and drawings and collages and all those triangle-folded notes from high school. My typewriter. My old pointe shoes. The tulle I wanted to save for a costume. The other tulle. Every Vogue and Sassy magazine from 1992-1997. The endless christamas lights I must save for parties and shows... It just gets to be too much! And yet, how do you know what of get rid of and what to hold onto?
My sister and I used to mine the room my mother grew up in for clues and artifacts from when she was our age. We would delight in cryptic letters and take pictures in her old clothes. I am so grateful there was something left there for us to uncover.
I really enjoyed the 7 1/2 month period I spent living out of a suitcase last year, and I know that was largely a function of not carrying around so much baggage, both figuratively and literally. Now I live in a 5th floor walk-up and every time I'm about to acquire something I ask myself if I really want to carry it up all those stairs, and then carry it down again at some point in the not-too-far future. But I also feel so tied to the stuff that is sitting in boxes in my mom's house. It's not just that I want to have certain books around me, I want to have THOSE books, with the notes in the margins and the dog-eared pages. I want to be able to unravel tightly-wrapped notes and travel as if through a wormhole to my mind circa-1995. I want my daughter or grand-daughter to be able to slip on my old pointe shoes and feel where I stood.
I actually threw out Susanna's sunflower just recently; it had almost turned to dust, but I'm glad I saved it all these years. She got it for me when I was having a bad day and sometimes when that happens now I remember what she did, and I can see it there in the locker bursting with color and life, and it makes me feel better. If I had thrown it out as soon as it faded, I might not have remembered.

Full disclosure: It is a snowy day here in NYC and a sort of day-off before a very busy spell. I just listened to This American Life #199. It's called The House on Loon Lake and it's a really good one.

anesthesia

I had a small medical procedure today and went under, as they say, and when I was waking up I heard a man talking and I had the sensation of being very close to him. Not physically close, but emotionally-close. I couldn't see him, we were separated by a curtain hanging down between our beds, but I heard him breathing, coming to, drinking his juice, and eating his peanut-butter and crackers. I heard his banter with the nurse and the anesthesiologist and the doctor who had performed his procedures. Since he had been 'scoped' -- the doctor was showing him pictures, of his own insides, and the man joked that he should put them on facebook. His doppelganger! When the nurse asked who was coming to get him, he answered, "my wonderful, creative and kind father-in-law." Then I started to imagine the band on his finger. Before I heard that I had assumed he was not married. His voice sounded young but also grounded, self-assured. He had a good sense of humor even when he was in some pain, which is a great test. He sounded like "a catch." Something about the whole experience, wearing those uninspired gowns, putting your belongings into a locker, shuffling around in little grippy socks or, even better, being pushed on a bed or a wheelchair, being 'taken care of' by all of the nurses and doctors, and giving over to the sedatives (?) -- it simultaneously made me feel very vulnerable and very safe. It also reminds me of 1984-- is that the one where the characters take 'soma'? There is something futuristic about the anonymity of it.
Perhaps it is not surprising that the first voice I heard when I am came to I believed to be a close friend. Apparently, as the medicine was taking effect I had started complimenting everyone in the room. I remember my doctor's fuchsia cardigan sweater over her scrubs, it really was cute. When I woke up my blood pressure was very low for awhile but maybe it was just because I wanted to stay a little longer in that state, listening to this man 'coming to,' a very private moment. He left first and as he ambled past me he turned his head and gave me a big smile and a thumbs up. We had shared something-- I think he felt it too.

Alice Walker says goodbye to her friend Howard Zinn - The Boston Globe

I met Howard only once, in Wellfleet, after an amazing performance of Pillowman directed by Howard's wonderful son, Jeff Zinn. He was incredibly warm and friendly-- to the point that I wondered if he mistook me for someone else-- but since I love him so, and felt I already knew him through his work, I didn't mention it and talked with him like we were old friends.
Alice Walker says goodbye to her friend Howard Zinn - The Boston Globe

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I especially love Alice's dream.